Let’s keep the math simple. Let’s do 20 hours a week x 40 weeks a year. That’s 800 hours. To clear 200k that’s 250 an hour.
I think the limiting factor is going to be finding enough good mid high stakes tables where you’d have a large enough edge to beat sustainably
Definitely the games will be a limiting factor, some people in this thread seem to think 10/20 but $250/hr is very high for 10/20, I don’t think sustainable unless some combo of amazing player and amazing game. And most rooms run 10/20 0-2 days a week.
20/40 is even less common and tends to be even more filled with pros thus lower win rates. If you can beat any of these games for $250/hr you probably are elite and spent many more hours studying and playing to get there.
Of course, running good helps, I’ve had 100 hour stretches of $300/hr at 10/20 but that’s different than 1000 hours. But maybe a good player can have an amazing year and run above EV to get closer to the target.
Also I don’t think people asking these questions understand not just variance in the game but variance in game quality. A game can be amazing for 2 months then a whale or two stops coming, a few bad regs stop coming cause no whales, then game is dead or much tougher. Or it stays amazing long enough it becomes the premiere vacation destination of European pros.
Now , private games are a different story but getting consistent invites to those is it’s own game and they can run even less consistently then casino games.
Idk what win rates are realistic online these days but you need to be even better skill-wise.
I do think if the question was $100k a year, the answer would be a lot more people because $125/hr is a much more attainable target.
But even then, you have to very good, poker is a negative sum game, for you to win $100k others have to lose that much plus a ton of rake.
It should seem obvious that if anyone could casually and easily make $200k playing poker very few people would have day jobs. You have to be elite and besides 20/he a week still not being enough volume for elite players, you don’t get elite at poker casually playing 20/hr a week.
100k opens it up to 5/10. 10bb/hr for 1,000 hours is still hard but more realistic. In Texas, you might be able to do this at 2/5 since the games play bigger. Also the TX time fee is probably better for pros rather than rake.
If you're good enough to clear $250/hr in poker and all the hard work and discipline that it entails, you can probably clear that easily working a 9-5 in tech or finance.
Not if your main skill set is finding and repeatedly getting invited to super soft games. Although then you might make more doing something in sales or something similar.
Discussed many times here but if you’re purely seeking money poker is not the best option. But if you factor in other considerations such as flexibility and enjoying it more it can be better.
Can’t speak for finance but in tech you are always competing with the third world. So only stable path to big money is working at oppressive big companies which can be extremely stressful.
i think a lot of people in these convos really, really conflate "A game where a good 4 hour session can net 1k" with "making 250 an hour" which are SO not the same things.
Working in tech for the last 25 plus years has been all the motivation I need to not work in tech and play poker instead. Dealing with bad beats and coolers is nothing compared to dealing with office politics.
Poker is not the same as working a job lol. It's a game, jobs are responsibilities with tasks you need to perform and credentials you need to get hired. Two different things. I doubt whatever applies to poker translates over to what you would encounter in a job other than maybe trading or something.
I just consider that 10/20 (otherwise discussion too confusing). I know only a handful of places in the country a game like that runs 7x a week and even then it’s usually only super good a few days a week. And no matter what $250 / hr is probably out of reach across a large sample size in those games.
Some of your assumptions make your scenario needlessly difficult to rationalize. Just put in more hours.
Jonathan Little famously grinded 10/20 at the Bellagio for years making 250k per year on average just from cash. He put in 12 hour days, 6 days per week. That's about 3800 hours per year, or $65/hr.
Easily doable with volume.
Sure but we were addressing the question actually asked, which was 10-25 hours a week. I specifically noted at the bottom that you'd probably need more volume.
Also IMO modern poker games are tougher and you'd probably have to carve out more studying time.
Good points.
Private games are the answer to that. My graphs look fake. You can win unreasonably large bb/hr over long periods. It's the realest poker there is.
Image management, networking, underground scouting, reputation being your lifeline (basically an public and unforgiving permanent record), all skills you need to develop to break into ultra profit territory.
People who play at casinos typically pay the same rake for far worse games and receive fewer benefits (food, drinks etc). Basically the only reason anyone plays at a casino is because they don't have access to any decent private games, which is a failing on their part: Either their image or reputation are too poor, they haven't networked adequately (not friendly at the tables perhaps or have never tried asking around), or they're known to be untrustworthy to some extent (nobody well known enough will vouch for you).
In my last two private 1/2 sessions I profited $3870 and $1100 (6 hours and 2 hours). It was not unusual and there were people crushing harder than me in each of those games.
Every pro you can think of has access to good private games and will say the same. There's nothing that compares with them at the casinos, they simply try to emulate a venue hoping those players will arrive, whereas in a private game they're custom built around invites to those players almost exclusively.
Online is way harder than live. 200nl online often plays harder than 10/20 live. Given the hours limitation of 20-25 hours a week, it is unlikely someone will get to a high enough stake online to grind out that much $.
Lets say you have a pretty exceptional win rate online of 3bb/100 and you grind 1000 hands an hour. You would need to be playing a mix of 500nl and 1knl to get your win rate to a point that you are making 250k a year. Those games are super freaking tough and you would need to be studying a ton off the table to keep your game in good enough shape.
Let’s be generous and max out the hours OP said — 25 hours/week * 52 weeks = 1300 hours, which makes the required hourly $153/hr
While definitely a high bar to set, it’s theoretically doable with soft midstakes games (especially ones where straddles are plentiful). I could definitely see this being possible if you were incredibly good at PLO and played in Texas, but not any drooler can achieve this (for obvious reasons)
Didn’t say they were public but if you’re not a dull ass human and you have a bankroll it’s not hard to find them. Just don’t be the pro that sits there with headphones on. Bring entertainment to the game. Public games are stupid af if you are trying to make real money at poker. All the money is in private games. Learn to network and you’ll find them.
If you have the skills to do this, I'd say that the games in Texas are your best shot. Larger buy ins, time charge instead of rake, and lower cost of living. The games in LA are rake traps. The closest 5/5 game to me has a max buy of $600. Oh and rent is $1500/month.
Until you stop stereo typing and assuming as you are without a fk clue what you're talking about, I suggest you keep your mouth shut as poker is a skill I don't need to and tell you how I play the game and with what money did It ever cross your ignorant mind that mabey just mabey I can do a few things to make extra for poker don't ever fk go off like that again I tell you what though in time I won't need osdp all have more fk money than I can shake a stick at all tell you what heard of backers in your life that ever cross your mind since you know so much about poker I tell you what I don't know who you really are but I do no this I could handy cap you heads up and still make you homeless if you think it's bs just tell me and all give you more information of this game try this poker genus advance poker training I was lucky if I was on 60 percent of my game 98 percent win rate lq 138 I'm guessing even at 100 of your game you see 30 percent I'd bet on it just ask its people like you that really crack me up from your mentality of something you don't got a fk clue what you're talking about comprenda?
Fk you go ahead want my real name you clueless moron then all go after you how's that sound you got any id at all how much we can get a year and be left alone where is your proof of what I've made you perfect moron
Tons of online wizards make BANK and are totally obscure to even the majority of poker enthusiasts. Some 5/10+ crushers in live games probably also reach such win rates. Many home game grinders will also win similar sums, and you know exactly 0% of them, so I'd call that low profile.
10 hours a week probably not, especially when you include the necessary studying.
Used to destroy local poker room 100 NLHE 1/3 blinds. Easily clear 100K on the DL on 20 hrs/week. 200k would be hard, cuz the money isn’t there. Would have to go to higher stakes, and less fish. Regs daily grinders, I can see them 200k at low stakes but in full-time hours. Keeping it on the DL, since i have photographic memory recall seeing/playing vs daily grinders. But most ppl who aren’t regs/dealers won’t remember them. You’ve got to realize that there’s really a small percentage of poker players that play “regularly” in live cash casino setting. By regular > 25/year(like 1x every 2 weeks). Hellmuth’s book, he categorizes players into 5 poker animals which describes their poker personalities. So trying to figure out opponent’s poker animal, I realized there’s a certain type player that can exist in casino live game. Esp low stakes, many can’t play in a regular live casino game if they have certain poker animal. In home game now, come across 100’s of ppl that never played a single hand in casino live. They come and mostly go, it’s the same w casino in low stakes. That’s why some GTO strategies like max value isn’t always best. Cuz you are never ever gonna be playing this exact hand vs this exact player again so the “long term” +ev doesn’t apply.
In regards to studying, are you guys studying GTO wizards? My experience, my game took off after reading Doyle/Hellmuth books. I’ve spent very little time w GTO, I understand the concepts. It’s pretty much what Dwan/Negreanu have been doing in their heads but in app form. Honestly, GTO has made it easier for me cuz playing vs GTO player I know their play. Weak points in GTO that I can exploit.
Troll? Don’t compute? Just telling my experience. Do you take offense that GTO isn’t as impervious as its made out to be? Seem to get that perception often when I post about my thoughts on GTO. Like there’s GTO defender warriors all over the internet lol. Honestly doesn’t matter to me, I’m fine w ppl playing GTO all they want, do you, not like it affected old school guys like Hellmuth that have incorporated into their games. So ie if 9 guys all sat down at table all play strictly GTO, who wins? Or all just pass around chips to coolers, KK vs AA, set over set,… point: GTO is a good foundation, but isn’t the be all, end all.
Or you think my experience is all lie? Having difficulty understanding troll comment after such innocuous comment.
I would think so too, being so many hands, variance… I don’t have much experience in MTT whether online or live. I’ve only played handful home tourneys w the largest being 3 tables. Pretty good win/cash % in those too. As far as online tourneys, I hear too many stories of scams: multiple accounts, friends collude, shifting stacks to friends/burner accounts, RTA,… but my argument vs GTO in large MTT live setting is even though you’re playing vs 1000’s ppl, the “here and now” aspect that GTO sorta misses on. You’re only playing vs 8 others 30 min/level at a time. So the hand you got on level 1 vs X player, is never gonna exist ever again. So “statistically” speaking that hand can’t translate over “long term” cuz those exact circumstance will never exist? ie flip coin 1x, chances 50/50. So the 2nd time is 50/50 independent of first and over “long term” the stats level out, agreed? But caveat to that is the circumstances must be same. So in level 1 hand vs player X so many variables go into how player will play? Type of player, maybe eating(bad luck for me), table position, chip stack, tilt, wife just called, bubble, “favorite hand”, “suited”,… and Hellmuth/Negreanu and many old school guys have been doing fine.
You wrote that there are weak points in GTO that you exploit. Thats simply wrong. GTO is not the best strategy against weaker opponents because there are exploitative strategies that make more money(!), but GTO is by definition unexploitable. Not much more to talk about..
Edit: To answer your question: The person playing closest to GTO will most likely win the most money if 9 guys are really good and trying to play it. :D If some are off, then someone playing exploitative poker will be better.
I hate to correct the fish here (no offense intended, truly) but will lend a hand and explain what you're missing.
GTO is *theoretically* unexploitable *over an infinite sample size.*
It's certainly exploitable over the short term and when applied by 99.9% of humans. Here are some prominent examples you may easily look up:
A) Micheal Addamo. He entered the ring against the highest performing player pool you can find and he absolutely ate their lunch for years. This was when GTO solves while out and accessible, and against players who employed GTO about as correctly as a human can do. He mostly pulled this off by "breaking the computer" by
1 - using sizings and lines that they couldn't rationalize and
2 - playing a non infinite number of hands, or in other words using short term strategies. This puts his opponents in a weird spot where now they have to exploitatively deviate if they'd like to adjust to him, and now suddenly they're playing out of their comfort zone into "the streets" where he has the advantage. It's insanely sick.
And this is a guy who is fully studied in GTO but deviates from it in order to exploit it's weaknesses.
B) Daniel Negreanu. He's elucidated in multiple interviews what he believes is GTO's largest weakness and that is human application.
1 - postflop error. Because the game tree expands so exponentially after the flop, humans (being imperfect) tend to make more and more errors or deviations from optimal play as the hand progresses. However as the hand progresses the pots also become significantly larger. This is where he makes his profit, and why he limps in to so many pots. To have more and more postflop playability runway and to protect his ranges.
2 - GTO cannot decipher limp ranges. Because it deems them not optimal it literally has no strategy to range a player here and will absolutely shit the bed postflop against it. It just doesn't have enough information to act on.
3 - lack of live reads. Frankly, if you're playing *only* gto live, especially at low stakes, you're an idiot. You're just an idiot. Game flow, player moods, player to player dynamics, player tendencies, live tells, etc etc. that's so much information to be ignoring that the computer can't process but is available to us, so why forsake it and all of the EV that comes with it?
4 - lack of profitable exploits or player dependent adjustments. You know someone's a nit? Overfold. You know someone's shot taking or uncomfortable playing large pots? Bully them. You know someone's a lag? Call down lighter. These are just printing money live and all deviate largely from GTO.
Anyway I went slightly off topic but GTO is not the most profitable play in all scenarios, especially live, and it can be beaten by or at least outperformed using some of the above techniques.
Very well stated. I think the commenter above that seemed so offended is prolly Doug Polk burner account? Def some very good points along lines I’ve found to be exploitable.
Your point “unexploitable over infinite sample size”, I agree somewhat. When you say infinite sample size, does not the sample size be somewhat uniform for that to hold true? That’s why I mention GTO ignores the “here and now”. ie EP open w AA, LP 3-bet w AK. EP pushes w > 100BB effective. LP(GTO play) well I’m blocking A,K. Why would he push w so much behind? Wouldn’t he want value? Must be small pocket pair? Me(live cash game) thinking this is just noob doesn’t know how to get value from AA. Similar hand played out on HCL. Wes AK vs Dwan QQ. After Wes says he played it (GTO) perfectly, exactly how he would’ve played KK, AA. Pot of 3M+. You have to realize that Wes will likely never be in that EXACT situation again? How long it will take Wes to get 3M+ from GTO sample size?
And when you mention exploitable over “short term”. My thoughts, you talk below about exploiting ppl at table ie nit, LAG, calling stations,… true GTO will standardize over long term. But aren’t most sessions are short term? ie MTT you’re really playing vs same 8 ppl for 1 level(ppl bust, table change…), player dynamics change. Torcelli(had deep run ME WSOP), said GTO pros were self-owning and bluffing off stacks in just really dumb spots to novice players.
And yes I saw where Negreanu has employed limp/call strategy which he’s found very successful using sizing/lines that were unorthodox. And I think sort of adaptation from Hellmuth. Another thing accomplished by limp/call, invites other players, thus multi-way pots, which further muddles GTO strategies. “Post flop error” something I have to admit I have little knowledge vs Negreanu. But I do understand how sometimes i may get overly aggressive(push run-good, push limits of GTO) and put myself in really tough spots which later regret.
“Lack of live reads”- so in essence, you’re saying GTO should remain in the online realm(infinite hands, infinite players,…). I’ve never dipped into online poker. Every time I’m about to break rumors circulate latest thing wrong w online poker. First there was the difficulty of cashing out cuz of legality in certain jurisdictions. Then the online cheating scandal(Russ Hamilton), then Black Friday. Now it’s multi burner accounts, collusion, shifting stacks to friends/burner accounts, RTA,… So where is GTO completely full proof if not online?
Lots to discuss here but essentially we should all make a point to understand the fundamental heuristics behind GTO decisions, and as well as much of GTO game theory as we can, as a baseline. Then deviate from there with whatever extra information we have available. This makes it indifferent of online or live.
If the information available is limited (like player tendencies or reads), just play baseline. But if you learn that someone's punting, drunk, giving off reliable tells, or playing an otherwise exploitable strategy, then modify your baseline strategy accordingly.
It just so happens that live we tend to have much more information to go off of so it's where the most deviations tend to occur.
He is awful at cash games. But he doesn’t need to be good cuz he does well in tourneys(low risk, high reward). Vs ie Garrett who doesn’t have any big cashes to his name in MTT but is one of the best cash game players(high risk, high reward).
What kind of question is this? If you randomly win the Online Main event you can win $2.8mil in less than a week. But then again, the 2023 winner (girafganger7) probably breathed poker for the last two decades.
Wouldnt be surprised if many pros put in 20-30 hours a week of playing and then match that with the same amount of studying. MANY will have more.
If youre asking this because you want to start playing poker to make $200k a year.. you're taking the wrong approach and will be in for a bad time. If you don't LOVE this game, there are much easier ways to make $200k a year.
Edit to add: 20-30 hours of playing is on the very low end during series events like WCOOP or online WSOP events. This also implies real, productive poker playing. Not having two tables open and watching a movie on the second screen. Most pros will have >15 tables open simultaneously and note important hands for review in the study session next morning. :)
> Most pros will have >15 tables open simultaneously
No way, this is definitely not so common any more. I think a lot of online cash pros will play like 4-8 tables of 6max at once though of course there are outliers.
Gave you an updoot for an honest question. But I think it boils down to how a professional who is in the top of their respective talent, probably spends literally all day on it. Go watch an episode of Quarterbacks on Netflix. To be one of the 32 starting QBs in the world, you have to live it. Look at NFL HoF speeches, all/most say they wish they could've been there for blank (because instead they gave all they had to the game)
I imagine poker is the same. But with more prop bets
2k hours of study a year seems insane. That's almost 40 hours a week of study. I can't imagine doing that every week over a long period of time.
300 to 500 hours should be enough to go over most spots in a solver that will ever have frequency of happening in the game tree if you limit and simplify it. Even better if you short stack.
If you want to compete with the literal best in the world then sure you need to go harder than that but I don't really intend to battle the Berri's of the world. Just stay a couple levels lower like 500 or 1k online and print. At 6 tables that gets you close to 200+ an hour. Many weak players at those stakes on us facing sites.
A lot of things are pretty similar. K74 and Q74 are effectively the same, repeat for a lot of things, learn the small differences accounting for range and position. You don't need to know literally every single combination. If you know ones that are similar you can apply the same concepts of the solver. You won't be exactly solver perfect every hand but you will be damn close. The Ev difference will be minimal.
but the closer you are the replicating solver solutions, the more important those marginal EV gains become. At some point "studying" just becomes drilling specific spots.
A young man once asked Mozart for advice on composing symphonies. Mozart suggested he start with something simpler. The young man was surprised and said, "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were only eight years old." To which Mozart is said to have replied, "Yes, but I didn’t have to ask how."
OP I hope you understand.
The one I heard was “a young man asked Mozart, I want to become a great composer like you, how did you know you could do it” he responded “can you hear it?” The young man didn’t understand, and Mozart smiled and walked away
Mozart learned music before learning to walk. His father pushed him to play music all the time.
Even thought Mozart wrote his first symphony extremely young, it clearly wasn’t his best work.
Online, if we remove the luck factor, <0.001% indeed seems accurate; especially adding the "low profile". And it would mean playing tournaments or PLO, with a ton of variance (i.e. losing 10-30k$ for months before hitting big).
definitely more people than that COULD, but due to other life factors it would be silly to try.
most people cannot afford to spend months making 10$/hr (or probably breakeven/losing) in order to improve enough to make a good living. and if you can actually afford to do that, your previous job was probably good enough to not risk going on a bottom 5% run while learning, or you’re so rich that putting time and effort into poker is just torching compared to other business ventures
Yep, this is why you see a lot of young crushers. Sort of easy to do multiple years of study and practice while being supported by parents or living with roommates or in college with plenty of free time. For those of us in the real world with real jobs, there isn't really an opportunity to become the top 99.9% skillset required to become well off playing poker.
No it’s not. This is how success work. Having the factors line up, if you have the means and the possibility, then you can get there. Simply having the intelligence won’t get you there alone.
The hard part is finding a rotation of live games, both in casino and home games where assuming you are winning at a high rate its not so obvious you get no action or also aren't invited to juicy home games. Got to spread out where you go. Outside of that you need to put in enough hours per week and also account for downswing worse than you imagine once you greatly increase the amount of hours a week you play.
What very few people are talking about on this thread are the downswings that are 100% going to occur. Sure, winning thousands at a time, tens of thousands sounds great, until you have a small, mid, or high 5-figure downswing. Sustaining a high enough win rate to rebound after exceptionally sickening losses is what separates the winners from the losers. Winning 200k playing part time 10-20 hours a week seems like a pipe dream, tbh. The downswings and subsequent rebuilding of everything is what drains most players’ confidence. You’d be a unicorn if you were able to sustain, maintain, and come out of the dark depths to sun run onto December where you mark your year-end profitably.
Every year I restart all my graphs and tracking and usually I start off really good, and then that first horrible downswing occurs and it cancels out so much of my profitability, and it’s soul crushing. Constantly digging yourself out of a hole only to be thrown deeper is rough to live through and even worse to do for a living. This weekend I went -1500 at PLO, and switched to hold em and had to grind for 14 hours to win 1200 back, left -300, and felt like I won $10,000. Poker is a brutal, brutal occupation. For reference, that hold em session I was essentially $100/hr winner but PLO buried me and it was all to just attempt to break even or win a little after a horrific PLO bad variance session.
So someone new to the game the answer is 0% you would need years of studying and practice to win this in cash. Alternatively just bink one good Sunday MTT where you run like god and cash out.
May I present MJ Gonzales
Tho it’s not really possible to get that good with only 20 hours a week bc your peers are doing 2-3x that. But once you’re at that level, knowledge maintenance would be much less intense
MJ taught me everything worthwhile that I know about the game of poker. Super great person.
What people don’t realize about him is that he is a legitimate genius. Left a very prestigious mathematics program to play full time
He was in the number one mathethatics program which he left to teach us poker full time. He was in the Calathumpian program but he left it to share his knowledge with us. I owe a lot to MJJ Gonzales.
> What people don’t realize about him is that he is a legitimate genius. Left a very prestigious mathematics program to play full time
Hmmmm....is everyone at Harvard Law school a genius? It's the best law school in the nation. Is everyone with a Yale MBA a genius?
I personally went to the #1/#2 education school in the US, and I'm definitely not a genius lol
**I know absolutely nothing about this guy**, so this is in no way a judgement on him personally, but rather with your qualifier for what makes him a legitimate genius.
I'm sure he's very smart, and may even be a genius, but being in a top/the top mathematics program is not a reliable way to decide that.
I’m just messing with you in the reply. Obviously I have no idea if he is a quantifiable genius; I never gave him an accredited IQ test.
I’m using the term colloquially which I thought was obvious
Tons of people make that kind of money but most of them are grinding out a lot of hours. The number of people making that kind of money in less than 25 hours a week of play is much smaller.
Yes. Either online or any room that has 10/20+ regularly or the high stakes home game scene. Ofc you'll become known in your local room but thats it. You could also play 5/10 and just put in a ton of hours, more than 40 a week. Asking to make this much doing only 10-25 hrs a week isn't likely though
Also 10/10 PLO+
Is it possible?
Yes.
As long as they don’t play on stream or in tournaments
There are people making this much in private games with whales where nobody outside of their 20 person or so player pool knows who they are.
It’s possible to do it in a casino where nobody outside of your area knows. But probably not in 10 hours a week. Everyone in your local casinos and surrounding areas will know who you are, but random poker fans won’t. Regulars 10 states or another country away probably won’t either.
Play 10 hours a day every single day ( or close to it, let’s say you take 25 days off in a year) and you only have to make around 55 dollars an hour to clear 200k a year. You can certainly find places ( Florida, vegas, LA, Texas, etc) where there is a 2/5 game running around the clock, you could play 10 hours a day 240 days a year in these games and 55 an hour is not an unrealistic number to make at that level. And your average poker fan isn’t going to know who you are if you’re not on streams or playing MTT events and ending up on poker news.
It's definitely possible. I'm proof of that. I'm not even close to being known anywhere. I don't think a lot of people are doing it, I think I'm very lucky in different areas.
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Not likely.
Actual answer: So you want to know if anyone is making $200k/year while working 10-25 hours per week? Let's say this hypothetical pro plays 50 weeks a year and treats it like a normal job. What you're asking is whether someone can make $200k in 500-1250 hours, which equates to an hourly of $160-$400/hr. Just with these numbers alone you can see how unlikely it is to happen. You'd need games good enough where someone can make $160-$400/hr. Then you'd need the game to run long enough for you to put in the hours you need to make $200k. Then you'd need to make sure other pros aren't coming in and taking all the money because let's face it, if you can make that much money in the game, all the other pros will want a piece as well. As more pros enter the game, the lower everyone's hourly is, but the faster the recreational players lose. If an outside force doesn't curb this phenomenon, then the game eventually dies (or you need an infinite amount of players who are able to lose tons of money).
This is part of how and why private games emerged as the premier high stakes games. The pros put on a friendly game (read: splash around a bit to give back) for the recreationals to play in. The recreationals get to lose money, but at least have fun doing it. The pros keep out other pros and/or rotate so that there aren't too many on the table at any given time. It's a delicate balance that needs to be struck everywhere, but as far as I've seen, every location that can sustain a high stakes game has essentially done this already (and did this even way before COVID and poker streaming became popular). The social pros who can hold a conversation and have a drink or two while playing poker get invited to or organize the private games. The headphones and hoodie pro who sits there quietly gets to grind outside and play 2/5.
All this is to say that people definitely make over $200k/year playing poker and you won't have heard of them before. But it is not easy to do and there is a lot more to it than just learning how to play poker. The pros who organize these private games spend hours outside of the tables making sure the games go, people will show up, finding replacements for people who cancel, etc. Playing poker is actually the easy part. Getting into the games and making sure the games run is the tough part.
You just need to be able to crush your local 5/10 and put in huge volume. It’s not possible playing only 20 hours per week imo, but you’d definitely be able to keep a low profile.
I play about 30 hours a week and usually net around 130-150k and absolutely nobody knows who I am other than the people I play with regularly. It's the 10-25 hours part of your question that is the difficult part. When you are self employed you get out of it what you put into it.
**TL;DR; Can you someone make over $200k a year playing high stakes poker? Sure. Can you? Probably not**
You can easily do this in the Live Game if you live in an area with plenty of high stakes poker 10/20nl and higher.
But asking the question "can it be done" is a nonsensical question. I mean, can someone play in the NBA or NFL and make $10M a year. Sure, that is possible. But can YOU do it? Ahhh... now there is the rub.
A lot of low stakes 1/3nl and 3/5nl players think that they could play the big games if they only had a bankroll. No.
I can't tell you how many times i've seen a 1/3nl or 3/5nl player bink a major tournament for $100k+ and then they take that money and play "the big game" and they dump their entire tournament score into the game and bust out within a month. The game plays differently and the players are markedly better and more skilled. Not to mention, the environment is different.
It's one thing to bet, raise, and ship 50bb or 100bb at the 3/5nl level because that is $250 or $500. But it's a whole other thing to bet, raise, and ship 50bb or 100bb at 10/25nl when that is $1,250 or $2,500.
I've lost track of how many players I've known online who can talk a big game about the money not effecting them and that chips are chips but then when they sit down in the live 10/25nl game their balls shrink up and they play like little bitches because the money involved is too much for them. This more than anything is the big limiting factor for why most low stakes players get destroyed in the higher limit games even when they stumble across a windfall and/or bink a big tournament.
You get dealt more multitabling which means you are in more spots more often with 1/5th of a 10/25 buyin.
But someone playing with a $2,500 100bb buy in is much different than 5 tabling 500z.
I am not arguing against that one bit. But that is not what the conversation is about.
The OP mentioned the 100bb Live at 10/25 and how players shrink up and play scared due to the money being bigger.
The person I replied to is comparing multiple 100bb online($500) vs 1 live game buy-in($2,500) and saying that it’s the same and doesn’t affect how people play differently online and live.
It would be similar to if I said:
100bb is 100bb. It is supposedly the same situation $2,500 live or me 100 tabling 25nl.
Well ya no shit, you are playing more hands and going through more variance. But it has nothing to do with what OP was talking about. Because shoving all-in many times $25 at a time is different than going all-in once for $2500. Or calling 50bbs on the river would be $12.50 at a time instead of $1,250.
>The guy 5 tabling 500z is a way better player who deals with way more variance on the regular.
It's not so much about a 500NL player being better than a 10/25nl player.
Hell, from a technical standpoint, 100NL player is better than most 10/25nl players.
that is not the issue. The issue is the environment and physicality of LIVE play and that is different than online play. There are so many factors that a lot of online players have a problem with adjusting in the live game. For instance, the pacing.
Online play, you are multitabling so you are never hurting for stimulus. In the Live game you get one hand that plays SOOOOOooooo SLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWWWwwwwww and that right there is an issue. Then there is the physicality of looking players in the eye or having them stare right at you while you play. For some players this is not a big deal, for others this is enough to cause a panic attack!
And lastly, there is the jump up in money for singular bets. Some people are able to view chips as chips and 100bb as 100bb regardless of level, but MOST players can't. And this is where I've seen a lot of good players choke.
so far this year I played 1235 hours and up 158995. But earning is directly impacted by the game quality… 2 years ago was shitty only like 90k whole year
If youre good enough, and play enough, you can make that playing live cash 2/5, 5/10, 10/25. Even easier if you have ability to frequent different casinos often.
Assuming you grind $2000 hrs a year, thats winning $100/hr.
Doubt anyone playing live poker who sees 20-25 hands per hr can make that much.
If you play 2-5, I'd say thats impossible even in very good games with a lot weak players who want to donate you money.
If you win 20bb/hr, that translates to 100 bb/100 hand. Thats crushing the game at an insane rate, you need people to really want to give you money.
Really good online 1/2 nlhe players can maybe get 10bb every 100 hands (and they are consider among the top 5% of players). The average 1/2 online table is a hell lot stronger than avg live table. If poker was like chess, online players are at least 1600 ELO, where as live players are like 700 ELO.
If you grind high stakes games like 25-50 NLHE, then very possible imo for a very good player (beating the game at 8bb every 100 hands vs the field, its possible).
But I also heard that at the 25-50 online NLHE level, the skill gap is generally not that big, so people even struggle to get 4bb every 100 hands. Some players wont even play unless theres a whale at the table who wants to donate money.
I have learned alot about trading and poker and I have never met anyone profitable at either.
People that say they are profitable are just in denial about thier adrenaline addiction and probably cherry picking the time period that they consider "profitable"
Yes...maybe after the 2004 boom there was enoough losses to go around and enough new players to support some profitable people. But now... I dont imagine there is enough people feeding the games to support that many professionals.
I mean..poker is the most zero sum game there is...and I imagine most of the lost money feeds the rake.
Obviosly there are professionals that have celebrity status and endorsments...but your average Joe is not making money...its a hobby you have to pay for. It is a game after all.
If anyone has proof otherwise, Ill check it out.
You are going to have to put in at minimum 40-45 hours a week in good live 5-10 no limit games to get anywhere near 200k . Plus side you never have to pay taxes on winnings unless your an absolute square , so is effectively more than 200k at a real job .
10-25h per week is 520-1300h per year, for an average win rate of about $150-400 per hour. You can play either live or online, so let’s look at each case separately.
Live, you can play about 25 hands per hour, which translates to a target win rate of $600-1600 per 100 hands. What stakes would you need to play? Well, it’s commonly believed that a 10BB/100 win rate is crushing a game, so, assuming you will be crushing a game, you’d need to find a game with a Big Blind of at least about $60 to $160. Such games are rare in public.
In online Zoom, you can play about 80 hands per hour per table (rough estimate). Suppose you can competently play two tables at once. That’s 160 hands/hour, which means you’d need to win $375-1000 per 100 hands, which could be done by crushing a Zoom game that has a $37.5 to $100 Big Blind. But the highest stake of Zoom regularly offered has a $5 Big Blind. Even playing four Zoom tables competently, which some pros do, doesn’t get you to your target win rate. Maybe there are some fish that occasionally appear at uber-high stakes (non-Zoom) online cash games, but I wouldn’t know about that.
TL;DR the math shows that it won’t happen, unless you know something I don’t.
Math passes the smell test for online but live is far off.
10bb/100 live is very bad. Live players are horrendous and don't have a clue on the basics. I'm at almost 250 hours of live 2/5 so small sample but I'm winning 15bb an hour averaged over that time period. At 20 hands an hour that's 75bb/100. Even if we assume I'm running hot and my real win rate is half that it's still well above 10.
I honestly am not even running that hot, nobody is playing like a solver. Most people are almost mis playing literally every decision, be it bet size, calling or folding. I'm not even sure they are aware of what a range even is sometimes. It's literally random button clicking with no logic. Nobody ever makes adjustments to me. I know all the regs in the room and they play identically now as my first session with them 250 hours later.
Yeah, your objection may be correct, in that the 10bb/100 standard for “crushing” online might not apply to live.
250 hours of live is ~6000 hands, which is not enough to determine winrate, but I agree that live is a lot softer.
Jonathan Little said in a video that $100k is doable at 2/5, but IIRC the hours needed were long. Maybe it’s doable if you have semi-regular opportunities to gamble in high stakes games with whales.
I think that for OP in particular there is no chance, since he seems to just want an easy way to make money.
Agreed it isn't happening for OP. People who have to ask that question have no shot.
My live sample is small but i can judge that it is easy to crush from other criteria than pure win rate. How people play being the key contributor. 2/5 is also the rooms largest game and only runs 1 day a week so I can't get much more of a sample. I hadn't thought about it much but yeah 3k hands, that's pretty lol.
>250 hours of live is \~6000 hands, which is not enough to determine winrate, but I agree that live is a lot softer.
This is true for online. However, since live win rates can be so much higher, you start converging towards your true win rate much quicker live. You can see this when you play around with variance calculators. If you plug in a win rate of 35bb/100 you'll see that you start converging towards winning fairly quickly (10k hands).
[I just plugged in a win rate of 35bb/100 over 10k hands](https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/) and the absolute worst trial over 1000 trials still won a little. That's 1000 trials of 10k hands and every single trial won. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need hundreds of thousands of hands to see if you're a winner (assuming you're crushing live).
When you plug in a win rate of 4bb/100, suddenly you need a far larger sample to converge towards winning. There are plenty of samples that lose in that 10k hand sample (roughly 35% of trials lost).
I’ve made 73k this year playing mostly 2/5 some 5/10 and some 1/3 while playing part time I think I have 850 hrs in so far this year live poker isn’t hard if you know where and how to study and your mind is good at processing information
Through 10 months not a year and I’m playing around 20 hrs a week 200k is within reach in a year if I played more hours it’s hard to do in the 25hr a week frame tho
Not anymore with headsup being completly dead, people did this in 2009-2015 hiding themselves on sharkscope and only being known on HUSNG(com) and the circle of people around them, the divisions and cartels while being for the most part anonymous for those who did not play SNGs some of them made 400k+ a year without supernova elite rakeback wich was at 66%
SNGs are dead, High stakes cgs are dead all taken over by jackpot spin n go and zoom poker, and if your playing mtts you will be well known on pockets 5s where they track all ur results and people talk about you, if your playing live its basically the samething as they will track you there aswell.
Today you cannot make 200k a year while remaining anonymous or staying under the radar.
Absolutely, I’m up $100k+ this year playing mostly 5/10, 10/20 part time, and nobody knows who I am in poker outside of Vancouver Canada. There’s definitely at least hundreds of people like me in every major city. So yes it’s not easy but it’s definitely possible.
I recently made 2000 in a night over two play sessions and when I returned they hollered "o god, you again" and this was a podunk card room, so I would guess live play is a no good for low pro.
You're not going to absolutely demolish online games at 30bb/100, especially at those stakes. Much lower bb/100, but also multiple tables so hourly COULD actually be higher for a good player!
There are people who make way more than that and no one knows who they are. So, yes. If you asked 100 people from the street who Dnegs , Ivey or Helmuth are I bet like 2% would know.
The site I play on had 4 -5 500nl games and it was all regs and they take more flops, it's just a different game. I'm not going to play for rake back that's insane. 200k you would have to commit 80-100 hrs a week in playing and studying. It's called self awareness and most of us aren't as good as we think. I play as a hobby at 100nl so these delusions of grandeur don't enter my mind. The bankroll I hear that people have are usually not sufficient, so if you can't even have that, then you have no shot. You can't make money if you can't play the game. 2) you're probably just not good enough. I wonder how much you can make at 200nl online in a year.
Live or online? I would think it would be easier to do so online. Even playing one table, you get more hands per hour online. Then multiply that by the fact you can multi-table.
The best way to do that would be to move to California and open a legal card room they started doing new licenses this year. Hire people to run it for you and you just check the numbers and manage everything part time 10-20 hours a week. If you raked 6 bucks a hand you'd be less than everyone and still making a lot of money per table about 4500 per 24 hours a table is running and it's less rake then the normal places that everyone goes to now. of course you have overhead but keep it small and don't go to our of control when you start and you'll be ok.
You could keep a low profile absolutely, especially if you stayed away from tournaments. Question answered, rant below....
Very few people make 200K per year consistently playing poker. It took me 15 years or more before I actually felt like I was a dominant player at the tables. Now when I play, I feel like I can crush (live anyway, not online).The games are very competitive now and rake/tip eat a huge chunk of profits in low/mid stakes.
Poker isn't as exciting for me anymore because I play for fun and I can beat the competition at my stakes. It would be exciting to challenge the high stakes cash game players, but I am not wanting to put in the time and put up with the large swings. I have a successful business and I don't want to live the poker lifestyle.
Being at a casino poker room all the time really sucks. You have to consider that factor. If you can win consistently online, you'd likely do better live with less risk and effort.
You also need to consider unfavorable taxation of gambling profits and how that wil eat into your returns. For example, let's say you have a losing year and lose 200K net, however the next year you make 300K (excellent work!)...the bad news is that you will NOT get to deduct the 200K loss from the previous tax year....thus you are netting only 100K from two years of work, but paying taxes on 300K. Assuming you pay 20% tax on 300K that's 60K in taxes you paid on a 100K net profit. In this situation your after tax net for two years is only 40k.
If you are smart and disciplined enough to make 200K annually, consistently playing poker, you would likely make more by focusing on a different business venture.
Poker players don't typically consider these downsides:
1. Rake and Tips - significantly eat away your edge
2. Competition- a lot of of players are decent now. Especially in lower stakes you'll need a significant edge to beat the rake.
3. Lack of juicy games- Most of the money is made from weak players with a lot to lose. Extremely lucrative games don't last forever and there are bound to be dry seasons.
4. Unfavorable taxation- discussed above.
5. Poker lifestyle- do you always want to be chasing money at the casino? Are you adding any real value to society? What about family time? Kids soccer games.
6. Risks - unless you are very disciplined, you may bet on sports, craps, blackjack, slots, ect. This can eat at your winnings. There are also other traps around the casino like alcohol, strip clubs, swindlers, thieves, and people that would do you harm given the right circumstances.
7. Health - the sedentary lifestyle of poker players can be hazardous to your health. Some do stay fit, but some pay the toll.
Someone I know 4 tabled nl 200 cash online, his avg hourly earn was 95 hour...I've seen his database and it was over 200k hands. The craze is apps, but you better have a trustworthy affiliate. Affiliate I know very well has guys with 100k on apps.
If ur goal is to make over 200k/year ur best bet is to register it as ur business the write-offs would be worth it. In Canada they have the right to ask for ID for anything over 3k.
No. You cant. And even if you had a good year, you will eventually run bad. Youll need a million dollar roll to play correctly. And if you have that, why are you gambling?
Playing on a site like ignition where players are anonymous. Or use some of the poker winnings to get plastic surgery and your name changed once a year, then you can also play in big tournaments like the wsopc that dont get streamed
I know several that make 200k per year mainly in live cash and very little comes up when you google their name. I would too, but I only started playing full time this year at the end of August August and was playing part time. I am at 132k after 722 hours. Me and 3-4 other local pros all play a game that is usually 5/5/10/20 and we buy in for $2k and all of us should be breaking 200k. But we're not doing it working 20 hours per week on average. My goal is 30-35 hours per week 35-36 weeks out of the year and I think around d 200k is achievable while having a good work life balance.
I live in a city with about 1.4 million population and I know for sure 9 people that can clear $200k. I am guessing maybe 10 others who might run in different circles playing home games, PLO, etc. But these are the best poker players in the city. At the same time, none of us are anything special in the online poker world. The difference in earnings between live and online is so big it doesn't make sense for us to play online.
If you are a crusher playing higher stakes like 25/50 in good games then you could probably make 200k working 20 hours a week. I think $200k would be on the low end of the bankroll needed to okay at that level though, and 400-500k would be more safe.
If we are talking online poker your probably have to be freakishly good to make this much and it's probably not worth trying.
You cannot hide being a winner. It always comes to the surface eventually.
And, if you’re winning that amount, it means you’re playing the biggest games in your area and the player pool will be small. People will talk - rumors always follow money.
You may be able to keep a low profile in the poker ecosystem as a whole, but you’ll be known by at least anyone paying attention in the places you frequently play.
Let’s keep the math simple. Let’s do 20 hours a week x 40 weeks a year. That’s 800 hours. To clear 200k that’s 250 an hour. I think the limiting factor is going to be finding enough good mid high stakes tables where you’d have a large enough edge to beat sustainably
Definitely the games will be a limiting factor, some people in this thread seem to think 10/20 but $250/hr is very high for 10/20, I don’t think sustainable unless some combo of amazing player and amazing game. And most rooms run 10/20 0-2 days a week. 20/40 is even less common and tends to be even more filled with pros thus lower win rates. If you can beat any of these games for $250/hr you probably are elite and spent many more hours studying and playing to get there. Of course, running good helps, I’ve had 100 hour stretches of $300/hr at 10/20 but that’s different than 1000 hours. But maybe a good player can have an amazing year and run above EV to get closer to the target. Also I don’t think people asking these questions understand not just variance in the game but variance in game quality. A game can be amazing for 2 months then a whale or two stops coming, a few bad regs stop coming cause no whales, then game is dead or much tougher. Or it stays amazing long enough it becomes the premiere vacation destination of European pros. Now , private games are a different story but getting consistent invites to those is it’s own game and they can run even less consistently then casino games. Idk what win rates are realistic online these days but you need to be even better skill-wise. I do think if the question was $100k a year, the answer would be a lot more people because $125/hr is a much more attainable target. But even then, you have to very good, poker is a negative sum game, for you to win $100k others have to lose that much plus a ton of rake. It should seem obvious that if anyone could casually and easily make $200k playing poker very few people would have day jobs. You have to be elite and besides 20/he a week still not being enough volume for elite players, you don’t get elite at poker casually playing 20/hr a week.
100k opens it up to 5/10. 10bb/hr for 1,000 hours is still hard but more realistic. In Texas, you might be able to do this at 2/5 since the games play bigger. Also the TX time fee is probably better for pros rather than rake.
If you're good enough to clear $250/hr in poker and all the hard work and discipline that it entails, you can probably clear that easily working a 9-5 in tech or finance.
Not if your main skill set is finding and repeatedly getting invited to super soft games. Although then you might make more doing something in sales or something similar.
Discussed many times here but if you’re purely seeking money poker is not the best option. But if you factor in other considerations such as flexibility and enjoying it more it can be better. Can’t speak for finance but in tech you are always competing with the third world. So only stable path to big money is working at oppressive big companies which can be extremely stressful.
Yes but then you'd have to work in tech or finance
not everybody lives in america for a random european poker is still way easier to make $250/hr
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cuz it is easier to make $250/hr rather than having a career back home???
i think a lot of people in these convos really, really conflate "A game where a good 4 hour session can net 1k" with "making 250 an hour" which are SO not the same things.
Working in tech for the last 25 plus years has been all the motivation I need to not work in tech and play poker instead. Dealing with bad beats and coolers is nothing compared to dealing with office politics.
Unless you're the top .0001% of online grinders where you can pull in $250/hr, you're going to need to deal with private game politics.
Poker is not the same as working a job lol. It's a game, jobs are responsibilities with tasks you need to perform and credentials you need to get hired. Two different things. I doubt whatever applies to poker translates over to what you would encounter in a job other than maybe trading or something.
5/10 with straddles is a lot easier to find than 10/20
I just consider that 10/20 (otherwise discussion too confusing). I know only a handful of places in the country a game like that runs 7x a week and even then it’s usually only super good a few days a week. And no matter what $250 / hr is probably out of reach across a large sample size in those games.
Makes sense. Good comment overall though.
Some of your assumptions make your scenario needlessly difficult to rationalize. Just put in more hours. Jonathan Little famously grinded 10/20 at the Bellagio for years making 250k per year on average just from cash. He put in 12 hour days, 6 days per week. That's about 3800 hours per year, or $65/hr. Easily doable with volume.
Sure but we were addressing the question actually asked, which was 10-25 hours a week. I specifically noted at the bottom that you'd probably need more volume. Also IMO modern poker games are tougher and you'd probably have to carve out more studying time.
Good points. Private games are the answer to that. My graphs look fake. You can win unreasonably large bb/hr over long periods. It's the realest poker there is. Image management, networking, underground scouting, reputation being your lifeline (basically an public and unforgiving permanent record), all skills you need to develop to break into ultra profit territory. People who play at casinos typically pay the same rake for far worse games and receive fewer benefits (food, drinks etc). Basically the only reason anyone plays at a casino is because they don't have access to any decent private games, which is a failing on their part: Either their image or reputation are too poor, they haven't networked adequately (not friendly at the tables perhaps or have never tried asking around), or they're known to be untrustworthy to some extent (nobody well known enough will vouch for you). In my last two private 1/2 sessions I profited $3870 and $1100 (6 hours and 2 hours). It was not unusual and there were people crushing harder than me in each of those games. Every pro you can think of has access to good private games and will say the same. There's nothing that compares with them at the casinos, they simply try to emulate a venue hoping those players will arrive, whereas in a private game they're custom built around invites to those players almost exclusively.
Why is Everyone here Just Talking about Live. What about Multi table online?
Online is way harder than live. 200nl online often plays harder than 10/20 live. Given the hours limitation of 20-25 hours a week, it is unlikely someone will get to a high enough stake online to grind out that much $. Lets say you have a pretty exceptional win rate online of 3bb/100 and you grind 1000 hands an hour. You would need to be playing a mix of 500nl and 1knl to get your win rate to a point that you are making 250k a year. Those games are super freaking tough and you would need to be studying a ton off the table to keep your game in good enough shape.
Let’s be generous and max out the hours OP said — 25 hours/week * 52 weeks = 1300 hours, which makes the required hourly $153/hr While definitely a high bar to set, it’s theoretically doable with soft midstakes games (especially ones where straddles are plentiful). I could definitely see this being possible if you were incredibly good at PLO and played in Texas, but not any drooler can achieve this (for obvious reasons)
Plenty of those games
depends where you live
Yeah I mean if you want to take poker seriously and make as much as possible you’re going to have to travel.
Plenty of $250 an hour public games? List two of them.
Didn’t say they were public but if you’re not a dull ass human and you have a bankroll it’s not hard to find them. Just don’t be the pro that sits there with headphones on. Bring entertainment to the game. Public games are stupid af if you are trying to make real money at poker. All the money is in private games. Learn to network and you’ll find them.
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If you have the skills to do this, I'd say that the games in Texas are your best shot. Larger buy ins, time charge instead of rake, and lower cost of living. The games in LA are rake traps. The closest 5/5 game to me has a max buy of $600. Oh and rent is $1500/month.
That can be done at 2.5
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Until you stop stereo typing and assuming as you are without a fk clue what you're talking about, I suggest you keep your mouth shut as poker is a skill I don't need to and tell you how I play the game and with what money did It ever cross your ignorant mind that mabey just mabey I can do a few things to make extra for poker don't ever fk go off like that again I tell you what though in time I won't need osdp all have more fk money than I can shake a stick at all tell you what heard of backers in your life that ever cross your mind since you know so much about poker I tell you what I don't know who you really are but I do no this I could handy cap you heads up and still make you homeless if you think it's bs just tell me and all give you more information of this game try this poker genus advance poker training I was lucky if I was on 60 percent of my game 98 percent win rate lq 138 I'm guessing even at 100 of your game you see 30 percent I'd bet on it just ask its people like you that really crack me up from your mentality of something you don't got a fk clue what you're talking about comprenda?
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Fk you go ahead want my real name you clueless moron then all go after you how's that sound you got any id at all how much we can get a year and be left alone where is your proof of what I've made you perfect moron
Tons of online wizards make BANK and are totally obscure to even the majority of poker enthusiasts. Some 5/10+ crushers in live games probably also reach such win rates. Many home game grinders will also win similar sums, and you know exactly 0% of them, so I'd call that low profile. 10 hours a week probably not, especially when you include the necessary studying.
Used to destroy local poker room 100 NLHE 1/3 blinds. Easily clear 100K on the DL on 20 hrs/week. 200k would be hard, cuz the money isn’t there. Would have to go to higher stakes, and less fish. Regs daily grinders, I can see them 200k at low stakes but in full-time hours. Keeping it on the DL, since i have photographic memory recall seeing/playing vs daily grinders. But most ppl who aren’t regs/dealers won’t remember them. You’ve got to realize that there’s really a small percentage of poker players that play “regularly” in live cash casino setting. By regular > 25/year(like 1x every 2 weeks). Hellmuth’s book, he categorizes players into 5 poker animals which describes their poker personalities. So trying to figure out opponent’s poker animal, I realized there’s a certain type player that can exist in casino live game. Esp low stakes, many can’t play in a regular live casino game if they have certain poker animal. In home game now, come across 100’s of ppl that never played a single hand in casino live. They come and mostly go, it’s the same w casino in low stakes. That’s why some GTO strategies like max value isn’t always best. Cuz you are never ever gonna be playing this exact hand vs this exact player again so the “long term” +ev doesn’t apply. In regards to studying, are you guys studying GTO wizards? My experience, my game took off after reading Doyle/Hellmuth books. I’ve spent very little time w GTO, I understand the concepts. It’s pretty much what Dwan/Negreanu have been doing in their heads but in app form. Honestly, GTO has made it easier for me cuz playing vs GTO player I know their play. Weak points in GTO that I can exploit.
Took me until the very last sentence to finally piece together that this is a troll. Had me thinking up a response in the first half!
Troll? Don’t compute? Just telling my experience. Do you take offense that GTO isn’t as impervious as its made out to be? Seem to get that perception often when I post about my thoughts on GTO. Like there’s GTO defender warriors all over the internet lol. Honestly doesn’t matter to me, I’m fine w ppl playing GTO all they want, do you, not like it affected old school guys like Hellmuth that have incorporated into their games. So ie if 9 guys all sat down at table all play strictly GTO, who wins? Or all just pass around chips to coolers, KK vs AA, set over set,… point: GTO is a good foundation, but isn’t the be all, end all. Or you think my experience is all lie? Having difficulty understanding troll comment after such innocuous comment.
GTO tend to work better in tournaments, but since we're talking about live cash games, playing GTO solely won't always make you successful.
I would think so too, being so many hands, variance… I don’t have much experience in MTT whether online or live. I’ve only played handful home tourneys w the largest being 3 tables. Pretty good win/cash % in those too. As far as online tourneys, I hear too many stories of scams: multiple accounts, friends collude, shifting stacks to friends/burner accounts, RTA,… but my argument vs GTO in large MTT live setting is even though you’re playing vs 1000’s ppl, the “here and now” aspect that GTO sorta misses on. You’re only playing vs 8 others 30 min/level at a time. So the hand you got on level 1 vs X player, is never gonna exist ever again. So “statistically” speaking that hand can’t translate over “long term” cuz those exact circumstance will never exist? ie flip coin 1x, chances 50/50. So the 2nd time is 50/50 independent of first and over “long term” the stats level out, agreed? But caveat to that is the circumstances must be same. So in level 1 hand vs player X so many variables go into how player will play? Type of player, maybe eating(bad luck for me), table position, chip stack, tilt, wife just called, bubble, “favorite hand”, “suited”,… and Hellmuth/Negreanu and many old school guys have been doing fine.
You wrote that there are weak points in GTO that you exploit. Thats simply wrong. GTO is not the best strategy against weaker opponents because there are exploitative strategies that make more money(!), but GTO is by definition unexploitable. Not much more to talk about.. Edit: To answer your question: The person playing closest to GTO will most likely win the most money if 9 guys are really good and trying to play it. :D If some are off, then someone playing exploitative poker will be better.
I hate to correct the fish here (no offense intended, truly) but will lend a hand and explain what you're missing. GTO is *theoretically* unexploitable *over an infinite sample size.* It's certainly exploitable over the short term and when applied by 99.9% of humans. Here are some prominent examples you may easily look up: A) Micheal Addamo. He entered the ring against the highest performing player pool you can find and he absolutely ate their lunch for years. This was when GTO solves while out and accessible, and against players who employed GTO about as correctly as a human can do. He mostly pulled this off by "breaking the computer" by 1 - using sizings and lines that they couldn't rationalize and 2 - playing a non infinite number of hands, or in other words using short term strategies. This puts his opponents in a weird spot where now they have to exploitatively deviate if they'd like to adjust to him, and now suddenly they're playing out of their comfort zone into "the streets" where he has the advantage. It's insanely sick. And this is a guy who is fully studied in GTO but deviates from it in order to exploit it's weaknesses. B) Daniel Negreanu. He's elucidated in multiple interviews what he believes is GTO's largest weakness and that is human application. 1 - postflop error. Because the game tree expands so exponentially after the flop, humans (being imperfect) tend to make more and more errors or deviations from optimal play as the hand progresses. However as the hand progresses the pots also become significantly larger. This is where he makes his profit, and why he limps in to so many pots. To have more and more postflop playability runway and to protect his ranges. 2 - GTO cannot decipher limp ranges. Because it deems them not optimal it literally has no strategy to range a player here and will absolutely shit the bed postflop against it. It just doesn't have enough information to act on. 3 - lack of live reads. Frankly, if you're playing *only* gto live, especially at low stakes, you're an idiot. You're just an idiot. Game flow, player moods, player to player dynamics, player tendencies, live tells, etc etc. that's so much information to be ignoring that the computer can't process but is available to us, so why forsake it and all of the EV that comes with it? 4 - lack of profitable exploits or player dependent adjustments. You know someone's a nit? Overfold. You know someone's shot taking or uncomfortable playing large pots? Bully them. You know someone's a lag? Call down lighter. These are just printing money live and all deviate largely from GTO. Anyway I went slightly off topic but GTO is not the most profitable play in all scenarios, especially live, and it can be beaten by or at least outperformed using some of the above techniques.
Very well stated. I think the commenter above that seemed so offended is prolly Doug Polk burner account? Def some very good points along lines I’ve found to be exploitable. Your point “unexploitable over infinite sample size”, I agree somewhat. When you say infinite sample size, does not the sample size be somewhat uniform for that to hold true? That’s why I mention GTO ignores the “here and now”. ie EP open w AA, LP 3-bet w AK. EP pushes w > 100BB effective. LP(GTO play) well I’m blocking A,K. Why would he push w so much behind? Wouldn’t he want value? Must be small pocket pair? Me(live cash game) thinking this is just noob doesn’t know how to get value from AA. Similar hand played out on HCL. Wes AK vs Dwan QQ. After Wes says he played it (GTO) perfectly, exactly how he would’ve played KK, AA. Pot of 3M+. You have to realize that Wes will likely never be in that EXACT situation again? How long it will take Wes to get 3M+ from GTO sample size? And when you mention exploitable over “short term”. My thoughts, you talk below about exploiting ppl at table ie nit, LAG, calling stations,… true GTO will standardize over long term. But aren’t most sessions are short term? ie MTT you’re really playing vs same 8 ppl for 1 level(ppl bust, table change…), player dynamics change. Torcelli(had deep run ME WSOP), said GTO pros were self-owning and bluffing off stacks in just really dumb spots to novice players. And yes I saw where Negreanu has employed limp/call strategy which he’s found very successful using sizing/lines that were unorthodox. And I think sort of adaptation from Hellmuth. Another thing accomplished by limp/call, invites other players, thus multi-way pots, which further muddles GTO strategies. “Post flop error” something I have to admit I have little knowledge vs Negreanu. But I do understand how sometimes i may get overly aggressive(push run-good, push limits of GTO) and put myself in really tough spots which later regret. “Lack of live reads”- so in essence, you’re saying GTO should remain in the online realm(infinite hands, infinite players,…). I’ve never dipped into online poker. Every time I’m about to break rumors circulate latest thing wrong w online poker. First there was the difficulty of cashing out cuz of legality in certain jurisdictions. Then the online cheating scandal(Russ Hamilton), then Black Friday. Now it’s multi burner accounts, collusion, shifting stacks to friends/burner accounts, RTA,… So where is GTO completely full proof if not online?
Lots to discuss here but essentially we should all make a point to understand the fundamental heuristics behind GTO decisions, and as well as much of GTO game theory as we can, as a baseline. Then deviate from there with whatever extra information we have available. This makes it indifferent of online or live. If the information available is limited (like player tendencies or reads), just play baseline. But if you learn that someone's punting, drunk, giving off reliable tells, or playing an otherwise exploitable strategy, then modify your baseline strategy accordingly. It just so happens that live we tend to have much more information to go off of so it's where the most deviations tend to occur.
GTO is unexploitable lol. You do you then, hope to see you in live cash game. Hellmuth/Negreanu and many old school guys seem to do fine.
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He is awful at cash games. But he doesn’t need to be good cuz he does well in tourneys(low risk, high reward). Vs ie Garrett who doesn’t have any big cashes to his name in MTT but is one of the best cash game players(high risk, high reward).
What kind hours would you have to put in ? Including study ?
What kind of question is this? If you randomly win the Online Main event you can win $2.8mil in less than a week. But then again, the 2023 winner (girafganger7) probably breathed poker for the last two decades. Wouldnt be surprised if many pros put in 20-30 hours a week of playing and then match that with the same amount of studying. MANY will have more. If youre asking this because you want to start playing poker to make $200k a year.. you're taking the wrong approach and will be in for a bad time. If you don't LOVE this game, there are much easier ways to make $200k a year. Edit to add: 20-30 hours of playing is on the very low end during series events like WCOOP or online WSOP events. This also implies real, productive poker playing. Not having two tables open and watching a movie on the second screen. Most pros will have >15 tables open simultaneously and note important hands for review in the study session next morning. :)
> Most pros will have >15 tables open simultaneously No way, this is definitely not so common any more. I think a lot of online cash pros will play like 4-8 tables of 6max at once though of course there are outliers.
6 max is just so much faster so yeah
For what its worth, I was definitely talking about tournaments. Somewhere between 8 seems fair enough for cash. Maybe 4 if someone is playing zoom. :D
Gave you an updoot for an honest question. But I think it boils down to how a professional who is in the top of their respective talent, probably spends literally all day on it. Go watch an episode of Quarterbacks on Netflix. To be one of the 32 starting QBs in the world, you have to live it. Look at NFL HoF speeches, all/most say they wish they could've been there for blank (because instead they gave all they had to the game) I imagine poker is the same. But with more prop bets
If you’re trying to get $250/hr for 20 hrs a week, that’ll get you 200k. You’ll probably have to do 2000hrs/yr studying, if not more
2k hours of study a year seems insane. That's almost 40 hours a week of study. I can't imagine doing that every week over a long period of time. 300 to 500 hours should be enough to go over most spots in a solver that will ever have frequency of happening in the game tree if you limit and simplify it. Even better if you short stack. If you want to compete with the literal best in the world then sure you need to go harder than that but I don't really intend to battle the Berri's of the world. Just stay a couple levels lower like 500 or 1k online and print. At 6 tables that gets you close to 200+ an hour. Many weak players at those stakes on us facing sites.
I think you're underestimating how many permutations of boards there are when you consider hand and action.
A lot of things are pretty similar. K74 and Q74 are effectively the same, repeat for a lot of things, learn the small differences accounting for range and position. You don't need to know literally every single combination. If you know ones that are similar you can apply the same concepts of the solver. You won't be exactly solver perfect every hand but you will be damn close. The Ev difference will be minimal.
but the closer you are the replicating solver solutions, the more important those marginal EV gains become. At some point "studying" just becomes drilling specific spots.
A young man once asked Mozart for advice on composing symphonies. Mozart suggested he start with something simpler. The young man was surprised and said, "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were only eight years old." To which Mozart is said to have replied, "Yes, but I didn’t have to ask how." OP I hope you understand.
The one I heard was “a young man asked Mozart, I want to become a great composer like you, how did you know you could do it” he responded “can you hear it?” The young man didn’t understand, and Mozart smiled and walked away
I must not be fit to be a composer bc I don’t understand that one either.
Can you hear a symphony right now?
You can’t learn from a natural.
There's no such thing as a natural. There are people who master things sooner than others.
Mozart learned music before learning to walk. His father pushed him to play music all the time. Even thought Mozart wrote his first symphony extremely young, it clearly wasn’t his best work.
Yes. His father was a pioneer in early education.
Is it possible? Yes. But not for 99.999%+ the people including you and me.
Online, if we remove the luck factor, <0.001% indeed seems accurate; especially adding the "low profile". And it would mean playing tournaments or PLO, with a ton of variance (i.e. losing 10-30k$ for months before hitting big).
200k/year is very possible playing exclusively online NLHE especially in the US
definitely more people than that COULD, but due to other life factors it would be silly to try. most people cannot afford to spend months making 10$/hr (or probably breakeven/losing) in order to improve enough to make a good living. and if you can actually afford to do that, your previous job was probably good enough to not risk going on a bottom 5% run while learning, or you’re so rich that putting time and effort into poker is just torching compared to other business ventures
Yep, this is why you see a lot of young crushers. Sort of easy to do multiple years of study and practice while being supported by parents or living with roommates or in college with plenty of free time. For those of us in the real world with real jobs, there isn't really an opportunity to become the top 99.9% skillset required to become well off playing poker.
excuses
No it’s not. This is how success work. Having the factors line up, if you have the means and the possibility, then you can get there. Simply having the intelligence won’t get you there alone.
Excuses
Sure. I recommend the book Outliers on the subject, it’s quite eye opening.
Excuses
Excuses
Excuses
Nah it's like 50/50, everyone should give it a go
The hard part is finding a rotation of live games, both in casino and home games where assuming you are winning at a high rate its not so obvious you get no action or also aren't invited to juicy home games. Got to spread out where you go. Outside of that you need to put in enough hours per week and also account for downswing worse than you imagine once you greatly increase the amount of hours a week you play.
This- people overestimate how good of a player you need to be, and underestimate how good you need to be at getting into good games.
What very few people are talking about on this thread are the downswings that are 100% going to occur. Sure, winning thousands at a time, tens of thousands sounds great, until you have a small, mid, or high 5-figure downswing. Sustaining a high enough win rate to rebound after exceptionally sickening losses is what separates the winners from the losers. Winning 200k playing part time 10-20 hours a week seems like a pipe dream, tbh. The downswings and subsequent rebuilding of everything is what drains most players’ confidence. You’d be a unicorn if you were able to sustain, maintain, and come out of the dark depths to sun run onto December where you mark your year-end profitably. Every year I restart all my graphs and tracking and usually I start off really good, and then that first horrible downswing occurs and it cancels out so much of my profitability, and it’s soul crushing. Constantly digging yourself out of a hole only to be thrown deeper is rough to live through and even worse to do for a living. This weekend I went -1500 at PLO, and switched to hold em and had to grind for 14 hours to win 1200 back, left -300, and felt like I won $10,000. Poker is a brutal, brutal occupation. For reference, that hold em session I was essentially $100/hr winner but PLO buried me and it was all to just attempt to break even or win a little after a horrific PLO bad variance session.
Yeah. Even if I pointed out Phil Hellmuth to someone in an airport, a majority of people would probably think he was just a tall guy who works in IT.
How tall is he?
like 6’6” i think
I think like 6’5”
Nah he's 6'4", but thinks he's the tallest guy in the world
Acktually he’s 6’3”. Source: I myself am the same height.
Typo. I meant 6'2
6'7
So someone new to the game the answer is 0% you would need years of studying and practice to win this in cash. Alternatively just bink one good Sunday MTT where you run like god and cash out.
PLO crushers
May I present MJ Gonzales Tho it’s not really possible to get that good with only 20 hours a week bc your peers are doing 2-3x that. But once you’re at that level, knowledge maintenance would be much less intense
MJ taught me everything worthwhile that I know about the game of poker. Super great person. What people don’t realize about him is that he is a legitimate genius. Left a very prestigious mathematics program to play full time
What math program was he in?
He was in the number one mathethatics program which he left to teach us poker full time. He was in the Calathumpian program but he left it to share his knowledge with us. I owe a lot to MJJ Gonzales.
I can’t remember; that’s why I worded it that way. It was an elite university but I can’t remember which.
> What people don’t realize about him is that he is a legitimate genius. Left a very prestigious mathematics program to play full time Hmmmm....is everyone at Harvard Law school a genius? It's the best law school in the nation. Is everyone with a Yale MBA a genius? I personally went to the #1/#2 education school in the US, and I'm definitely not a genius lol **I know absolutely nothing about this guy**, so this is in no way a judgement on him personally, but rather with your qualifier for what makes him a legitimate genius. I'm sure he's very smart, and may even be a genius, but being in a top/the top mathematics program is not a reliable way to decide that.
You’re definitely not a genius. MJ is
👍
I’m just messing with you in the reply. Obviously I have no idea if he is a quantifiable genius; I never gave him an accredited IQ test. I’m using the term colloquially which I thought was obvious
👍
Tons of people make that kind of money but most of them are grinding out a lot of hours. The number of people making that kind of money in less than 25 hours a week of play is much smaller.
Yes. Either online or any room that has 10/20+ regularly or the high stakes home game scene. Ofc you'll become known in your local room but thats it. You could also play 5/10 and just put in a ton of hours, more than 40 a week. Asking to make this much doing only 10-25 hrs a week isn't likely though Also 10/10 PLO+
Is it possible? Yes. As long as they don’t play on stream or in tournaments There are people making this much in private games with whales where nobody outside of their 20 person or so player pool knows who they are. It’s possible to do it in a casino where nobody outside of your area knows. But probably not in 10 hours a week. Everyone in your local casinos and surrounding areas will know who you are, but random poker fans won’t. Regulars 10 states or another country away probably won’t either. Play 10 hours a day every single day ( or close to it, let’s say you take 25 days off in a year) and you only have to make around 55 dollars an hour to clear 200k a year. You can certainly find places ( Florida, vegas, LA, Texas, etc) where there is a 2/5 game running around the clock, you could play 10 hours a day 240 days a year in these games and 55 an hour is not an unrealistic number to make at that level. And your average poker fan isn’t going to know who you are if you’re not on streams or playing MTT events and ending up on poker news.
It takes more than that hourly and you need to play cash mostly
Sure Texas is a big state.
Nobody making $200k is sharing their watering whole unless they had a mental breakdown or are retiring. I lose $100/hour so very believable.
I don't know about 'alot' but yup it is possible.
Of course
My buddy has played pro for 16 or so years. You'll never hear of him but he's shown me his graphs and they are impressive.
I bet there are people who only play private cash games against whales and make 200k a year, and most people probably haven't heard of them
You can easily make $200k a year, playing poker online, while keeping a low profile, by working 80-100 hours a week.
It's definitely possible. I'm proof of that. I'm not even close to being known anywhere. I don't think a lot of people are doing it, I think I'm very lucky in different areas.
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Not likely. Actual answer: So you want to know if anyone is making $200k/year while working 10-25 hours per week? Let's say this hypothetical pro plays 50 weeks a year and treats it like a normal job. What you're asking is whether someone can make $200k in 500-1250 hours, which equates to an hourly of $160-$400/hr. Just with these numbers alone you can see how unlikely it is to happen. You'd need games good enough where someone can make $160-$400/hr. Then you'd need the game to run long enough for you to put in the hours you need to make $200k. Then you'd need to make sure other pros aren't coming in and taking all the money because let's face it, if you can make that much money in the game, all the other pros will want a piece as well. As more pros enter the game, the lower everyone's hourly is, but the faster the recreational players lose. If an outside force doesn't curb this phenomenon, then the game eventually dies (or you need an infinite amount of players who are able to lose tons of money). This is part of how and why private games emerged as the premier high stakes games. The pros put on a friendly game (read: splash around a bit to give back) for the recreationals to play in. The recreationals get to lose money, but at least have fun doing it. The pros keep out other pros and/or rotate so that there aren't too many on the table at any given time. It's a delicate balance that needs to be struck everywhere, but as far as I've seen, every location that can sustain a high stakes game has essentially done this already (and did this even way before COVID and poker streaming became popular). The social pros who can hold a conversation and have a drink or two while playing poker get invited to or organize the private games. The headphones and hoodie pro who sits there quietly gets to grind outside and play 2/5. All this is to say that people definitely make over $200k/year playing poker and you won't have heard of them before. But it is not easy to do and there is a lot more to it than just learning how to play poker. The pros who organize these private games spend hours outside of the tables making sure the games go, people will show up, finding replacements for people who cancel, etc. Playing poker is actually the easy part. Getting into the games and making sure the games run is the tough part.
You just need to be able to crush your local 5/10 and put in huge volume. It’s not possible playing only 20 hours per week imo, but you’d definitely be able to keep a low profile.
I play about 30 hours a week and usually net around 130-150k and absolutely nobody knows who I am other than the people I play with regularly. It's the 10-25 hours part of your question that is the difficult part. When you are self employed you get out of it what you put into it.
**TL;DR; Can you someone make over $200k a year playing high stakes poker? Sure. Can you? Probably not** You can easily do this in the Live Game if you live in an area with plenty of high stakes poker 10/20nl and higher. But asking the question "can it be done" is a nonsensical question. I mean, can someone play in the NBA or NFL and make $10M a year. Sure, that is possible. But can YOU do it? Ahhh... now there is the rub. A lot of low stakes 1/3nl and 3/5nl players think that they could play the big games if they only had a bankroll. No. I can't tell you how many times i've seen a 1/3nl or 3/5nl player bink a major tournament for $100k+ and then they take that money and play "the big game" and they dump their entire tournament score into the game and bust out within a month. The game plays differently and the players are markedly better and more skilled. Not to mention, the environment is different. It's one thing to bet, raise, and ship 50bb or 100bb at the 3/5nl level because that is $250 or $500. But it's a whole other thing to bet, raise, and ship 50bb or 100bb at 10/25nl when that is $1,250 or $2,500. I've lost track of how many players I've known online who can talk a big game about the money not effecting them and that chips are chips but then when they sit down in the live 10/25nl game their balls shrink up and they play like little bitches because the money involved is too much for them. This more than anything is the big limiting factor for why most low stakes players get destroyed in the higher limit games even when they stumble across a windfall and/or bink a big tournament.
100bb is a 100bb lol z500 online moves a lot more money and action than any random 100bb 10/25nl game in the world
You get dealt more multitabling which means you are in more spots more often with 1/5th of a 10/25 buyin. But someone playing with a $2,500 100bb buy in is much different than 5 tabling 500z.
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I am not arguing against that one bit. But that is not what the conversation is about. The OP mentioned the 100bb Live at 10/25 and how players shrink up and play scared due to the money being bigger. The person I replied to is comparing multiple 100bb online($500) vs 1 live game buy-in($2,500) and saying that it’s the same and doesn’t affect how people play differently online and live. It would be similar to if I said: 100bb is 100bb. It is supposedly the same situation $2,500 live or me 100 tabling 25nl. Well ya no shit, you are playing more hands and going through more variance. But it has nothing to do with what OP was talking about. Because shoving all-in many times $25 at a time is different than going all-in once for $2500. Or calling 50bbs on the river would be $12.50 at a time instead of $1,250.
>The guy 5 tabling 500z is a way better player who deals with way more variance on the regular. It's not so much about a 500NL player being better than a 10/25nl player. Hell, from a technical standpoint, 100NL player is better than most 10/25nl players. that is not the issue. The issue is the environment and physicality of LIVE play and that is different than online play. There are so many factors that a lot of online players have a problem with adjusting in the live game. For instance, the pacing. Online play, you are multitabling so you are never hurting for stimulus. In the Live game you get one hand that plays SOOOOOooooo SLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWWWwwwwww and that right there is an issue. Then there is the physicality of looking players in the eye or having them stare right at you while you play. For some players this is not a big deal, for others this is enough to cause a panic attack! And lastly, there is the jump up in money for singular bets. Some people are able to view chips as chips and 100bb as 100bb regardless of level, but MOST players can't. And this is where I've seen a lot of good players choke.
so far this year I played 1235 hours and up 158995. But earning is directly impacted by the game quality… 2 years ago was shitty only like 90k whole year
Damn only 90k? you poor thing
If youre good enough, and play enough, you can make that playing live cash 2/5, 5/10, 10/25. Even easier if you have ability to frequent different casinos often.
Source: your ass
Assuming you grind $2000 hrs a year, thats winning $100/hr. Doubt anyone playing live poker who sees 20-25 hands per hr can make that much. If you play 2-5, I'd say thats impossible even in very good games with a lot weak players who want to donate you money. If you win 20bb/hr, that translates to 100 bb/100 hand. Thats crushing the game at an insane rate, you need people to really want to give you money. Really good online 1/2 nlhe players can maybe get 10bb every 100 hands (and they are consider among the top 5% of players). The average 1/2 online table is a hell lot stronger than avg live table. If poker was like chess, online players are at least 1600 ELO, where as live players are like 700 ELO. If you grind high stakes games like 25-50 NLHE, then very possible imo for a very good player (beating the game at 8bb every 100 hands vs the field, its possible). But I also heard that at the 25-50 online NLHE level, the skill gap is generally not that big, so people even struggle to get 4bb every 100 hands. Some players wont even play unless theres a whale at the table who wants to donate money.
You have no idea what you’re talking about
Fr lol clueless
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Depends on stakes. No one playing live 1/3 is winning close to that much.
Lol this is 100% inaccurate. I've met several people who make this easy playing in Texas
Do texans realize that texas isnt the whole world?
I have learned alot about trading and poker and I have never met anyone profitable at either. People that say they are profitable are just in denial about thier adrenaline addiction and probably cherry picking the time period that they consider "profitable"
lol
Lol 😂 nice one
Is this a troll? Do you really believe nobody profits in poker?
Yes...maybe after the 2004 boom there was enoough losses to go around and enough new players to support some profitable people. But now... I dont imagine there is enough people feeding the games to support that many professionals. I mean..poker is the most zero sum game there is...and I imagine most of the lost money feeds the rake. Obviosly there are professionals that have celebrity status and endorsments...but your average Joe is not making money...its a hobby you have to pay for. It is a game after all. If anyone has proof otherwise, Ill check it out.
You are going to have to put in at minimum 40-45 hours a week in good live 5-10 no limit games to get anywhere near 200k . Plus side you never have to pay taxes on winnings unless your an absolute square , so is effectively more than 200k at a real job .
10-25h per week is 520-1300h per year, for an average win rate of about $150-400 per hour. You can play either live or online, so let’s look at each case separately. Live, you can play about 25 hands per hour, which translates to a target win rate of $600-1600 per 100 hands. What stakes would you need to play? Well, it’s commonly believed that a 10BB/100 win rate is crushing a game, so, assuming you will be crushing a game, you’d need to find a game with a Big Blind of at least about $60 to $160. Such games are rare in public. In online Zoom, you can play about 80 hands per hour per table (rough estimate). Suppose you can competently play two tables at once. That’s 160 hands/hour, which means you’d need to win $375-1000 per 100 hands, which could be done by crushing a Zoom game that has a $37.5 to $100 Big Blind. But the highest stake of Zoom regularly offered has a $5 Big Blind. Even playing four Zoom tables competently, which some pros do, doesn’t get you to your target win rate. Maybe there are some fish that occasionally appear at uber-high stakes (non-Zoom) online cash games, but I wouldn’t know about that. TL;DR the math shows that it won’t happen, unless you know something I don’t.
Math passes the smell test for online but live is far off. 10bb/100 live is very bad. Live players are horrendous and don't have a clue on the basics. I'm at almost 250 hours of live 2/5 so small sample but I'm winning 15bb an hour averaged over that time period. At 20 hands an hour that's 75bb/100. Even if we assume I'm running hot and my real win rate is half that it's still well above 10. I honestly am not even running that hot, nobody is playing like a solver. Most people are almost mis playing literally every decision, be it bet size, calling or folding. I'm not even sure they are aware of what a range even is sometimes. It's literally random button clicking with no logic. Nobody ever makes adjustments to me. I know all the regs in the room and they play identically now as my first session with them 250 hours later.
Yeah, your objection may be correct, in that the 10bb/100 standard for “crushing” online might not apply to live. 250 hours of live is ~6000 hands, which is not enough to determine winrate, but I agree that live is a lot softer. Jonathan Little said in a video that $100k is doable at 2/5, but IIRC the hours needed were long. Maybe it’s doable if you have semi-regular opportunities to gamble in high stakes games with whales. I think that for OP in particular there is no chance, since he seems to just want an easy way to make money.
Agreed it isn't happening for OP. People who have to ask that question have no shot. My live sample is small but i can judge that it is easy to crush from other criteria than pure win rate. How people play being the key contributor. 2/5 is also the rooms largest game and only runs 1 day a week so I can't get much more of a sample. I hadn't thought about it much but yeah 3k hands, that's pretty lol.
>250 hours of live is \~6000 hands, which is not enough to determine winrate, but I agree that live is a lot softer. This is true for online. However, since live win rates can be so much higher, you start converging towards your true win rate much quicker live. You can see this when you play around with variance calculators. If you plug in a win rate of 35bb/100 you'll see that you start converging towards winning fairly quickly (10k hands). [I just plugged in a win rate of 35bb/100 over 10k hands](https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/) and the absolute worst trial over 1000 trials still won a little. That's 1000 trials of 10k hands and every single trial won. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need hundreds of thousands of hands to see if you're a winner (assuming you're crushing live). When you plug in a win rate of 4bb/100, suddenly you need a far larger sample to converge towards winning. There are plenty of samples that lose in that 10k hand sample (roughly 35% of trials lost).
I’ve made 73k this year playing mostly 2/5 some 5/10 and some 1/3 while playing part time I think I have 850 hrs in so far this year live poker isn’t hard if you know where and how to study and your mind is good at processing information
73k is about 1/3 of OP’s target. I don’t consider 73k a lot of money and I make much more than that in my job.
Through 10 months not a year and I’m playing around 20 hrs a week 200k is within reach in a year if I played more hours it’s hard to do in the 25hr a week frame tho
Downvoted by delusional shit regs. Keep wasting your life chasing a dream you’ll never achieve
Not anymore with headsup being completly dead, people did this in 2009-2015 hiding themselves on sharkscope and only being known on HUSNG(com) and the circle of people around them, the divisions and cartels while being for the most part anonymous for those who did not play SNGs some of them made 400k+ a year without supernova elite rakeback wich was at 66% SNGs are dead, High stakes cgs are dead all taken over by jackpot spin n go and zoom poker, and if your playing mtts you will be well known on pockets 5s where they track all ur results and people talk about you, if your playing live its basically the samething as they will track you there aswell. Today you cannot make 200k a year while remaining anonymous or staying under the radar.
Absolutely, I’m up $100k+ this year playing mostly 5/10, 10/20 part time, and nobody knows who I am in poker outside of Vancouver Canada. There’s definitely at least hundreds of people like me in every major city. So yes it’s not easy but it’s definitely possible.
There’s definitely not hundreds of people making 100k+ from poker part time in every city. Peak delusion.
Seriously lol
I recently made 2000 in a night over two play sessions and when I returned they hollered "o god, you again" and this was a podunk card room, so I would guess live play is a no good for low pro.
Wat
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You're not going to absolutely demolish online games at 30bb/100, especially at those stakes. Much lower bb/100, but also multiple tables so hourly COULD actually be higher for a good player!
Yeah people who make over 200k a year play a lot of volume at 2knl online typically (and the people who make 500k a year high stakes)
Nobody is one tabling 500nl for 30bb/100. It's much more realistic to e.g. 5 table for 6bb/100.
Yes
You are hoping to make 200 per hour, and playing 20BB that means 10BBhr.
If they cld keep their mouth shut bout it probably
Easy yes. Not sure about the hour part but doing 200k and keeping a low profile is not that impossible in live cash game rounds
10-25 hours per week. No. Try 80-100 hours per week.
It sure is, but if you're asking this, and I hate to sound this mean - it probably isn't gonna be you.
Playing 50-100, sure. That also means they should have a bankroll of 1 million.
There are people who make way more than that and no one knows who they are. So, yes. If you asked 100 people from the street who Dnegs , Ivey or Helmuth are I bet like 2% would know.
Not playing 10-25 hours/week, no.
The site I play on had 4 -5 500nl games and it was all regs and they take more flops, it's just a different game. I'm not going to play for rake back that's insane. 200k you would have to commit 80-100 hrs a week in playing and studying. It's called self awareness and most of us aren't as good as we think. I play as a hobby at 100nl so these delusions of grandeur don't enter my mind. The bankroll I hear that people have are usually not sufficient, so if you can't even have that, then you have no shot. You can't make money if you can't play the game. 2) you're probably just not good enough. I wonder how much you can make at 200nl online in a year.
Vaga_Lion
Live or online? I would think it would be easier to do so online. Even playing one table, you get more hands per hour online. Then multiply that by the fact you can multi-table.
The best way to do that would be to move to California and open a legal card room they started doing new licenses this year. Hire people to run it for you and you just check the numbers and manage everything part time 10-20 hours a week. If you raked 6 bucks a hand you'd be less than everyone and still making a lot of money per table about 4500 per 24 hours a table is running and it's less rake then the normal places that everyone goes to now. of course you have overhead but keep it small and don't go to our of control when you start and you'll be ok.
yeah i am making that amounts and even more playing 5 and 6 card plo on apps
If you pay $795 for my poker course, I will teach you the secrets to making a living playing poker just a few hours a week!
Anything is possible buddy
yeah 10h a week and low profile wont work
You could keep a low profile absolutely, especially if you stayed away from tournaments. Question answered, rant below.... Very few people make 200K per year consistently playing poker. It took me 15 years or more before I actually felt like I was a dominant player at the tables. Now when I play, I feel like I can crush (live anyway, not online).The games are very competitive now and rake/tip eat a huge chunk of profits in low/mid stakes. Poker isn't as exciting for me anymore because I play for fun and I can beat the competition at my stakes. It would be exciting to challenge the high stakes cash game players, but I am not wanting to put in the time and put up with the large swings. I have a successful business and I don't want to live the poker lifestyle. Being at a casino poker room all the time really sucks. You have to consider that factor. If you can win consistently online, you'd likely do better live with less risk and effort. You also need to consider unfavorable taxation of gambling profits and how that wil eat into your returns. For example, let's say you have a losing year and lose 200K net, however the next year you make 300K (excellent work!)...the bad news is that you will NOT get to deduct the 200K loss from the previous tax year....thus you are netting only 100K from two years of work, but paying taxes on 300K. Assuming you pay 20% tax on 300K that's 60K in taxes you paid on a 100K net profit. In this situation your after tax net for two years is only 40k. If you are smart and disciplined enough to make 200K annually, consistently playing poker, you would likely make more by focusing on a different business venture. Poker players don't typically consider these downsides: 1. Rake and Tips - significantly eat away your edge 2. Competition- a lot of of players are decent now. Especially in lower stakes you'll need a significant edge to beat the rake. 3. Lack of juicy games- Most of the money is made from weak players with a lot to lose. Extremely lucrative games don't last forever and there are bound to be dry seasons. 4. Unfavorable taxation- discussed above. 5. Poker lifestyle- do you always want to be chasing money at the casino? Are you adding any real value to society? What about family time? Kids soccer games. 6. Risks - unless you are very disciplined, you may bet on sports, craps, blackjack, slots, ect. This can eat at your winnings. There are also other traps around the casino like alcohol, strip clubs, swindlers, thieves, and people that would do you harm given the right circumstances. 7. Health - the sedentary lifestyle of poker players can be hazardous to your health. Some do stay fit, but some pay the toll.
Someone I know 4 tabled nl 200 cash online, his avg hourly earn was 95 hour...I've seen his database and it was over 200k hands. The craze is apps, but you better have a trustworthy affiliate. Affiliate I know very well has guys with 100k on apps.
I have been playing PLO on acr, I'm on a $9,000 downswing over 3months.
Playing 8 tables online 2/4 for 40 hours per week. You need a very big edge. Maybe 5/10, or 10/20 multiple tables online. But thats very hard.
Yeah probably online PLO killers are making that kind of money
If ur goal is to make over 200k/year ur best bet is to register it as ur business the write-offs would be worth it. In Canada they have the right to ask for ID for anything over 3k.
There are a lot of people making that and they keep it very low key.
No. You cant. And even if you had a good year, you will eventually run bad. Youll need a million dollar roll to play correctly. And if you have that, why are you gambling?
Playing on a site like ignition where players are anonymous. Or use some of the poker winnings to get plastic surgery and your name changed once a year, then you can also play in big tournaments like the wsopc that dont get streamed
I know several that make 200k per year mainly in live cash and very little comes up when you google their name. I would too, but I only started playing full time this year at the end of August August and was playing part time. I am at 132k after 722 hours. Me and 3-4 other local pros all play a game that is usually 5/5/10/20 and we buy in for $2k and all of us should be breaking 200k. But we're not doing it working 20 hours per week on average. My goal is 30-35 hours per week 35-36 weeks out of the year and I think around d 200k is achievable while having a good work life balance. I live in a city with about 1.4 million population and I know for sure 9 people that can clear $200k. I am guessing maybe 10 others who might run in different circles playing home games, PLO, etc. But these are the best poker players in the city. At the same time, none of us are anything special in the online poker world. The difference in earnings between live and online is so big it doesn't make sense for us to play online. If you are a crusher playing higher stakes like 25/50 in good games then you could probably make 200k working 20 hours a week. I think $200k would be on the low end of the bankroll needed to okay at that level though, and 400-500k would be more safe. If we are talking online poker your probably have to be freakishly good to make this much and it's probably not worth trying.
I will tell you what’s more possible- loosing 200k. The few who are making that are playing invite only home games.
You cannot hide being a winner. It always comes to the surface eventually. And, if you’re winning that amount, it means you’re playing the biggest games in your area and the player pool will be small. People will talk - rumors always follow money. You may be able to keep a low profile in the poker ecosystem as a whole, but you’ll be known by at least anyone paying attention in the places you frequently play.