1. I'm not anywhere near a pro. When things are going good the supplemental income is great. when it's not, not so much. I had some personal difficulties in the past year and whatever I had stored as my poker
bankroll pretty much evaporated.
Over the years my overall winnings from poker are probably around $25k, mostly from online MTTs (and most of those 4-5 years ago) and maybe 30% from live play. So yeah, nothing significant or life-changing at all.
2. I really dig the live experience and the first time I played live it was really cool. I mean, I had played some small sit-n-goes with friends back when the poker boom first started and everyone was playing poker.
The first cash game I ever played live was a home game I found posted on craigslist in my hometown. It was great. The guy was really friendly, the players were all cool, he had a professional dealer, gave us great free food and drinks. There was no rake, just $5 time charge (which I thought was a lot at the time, I wish I had known how great it was). It was $1-$2 live and I would buy in for $100. The players were so terrible I usually made like $400-$500 a night. They stopped having the game because the host and his girlfriend probably lost $15K in like 9 months. I think I personally took $3k off him.
3. I don't track players live, it might be a good idea. But I have a pretty incredible memory when it comes to poker. I don't remember their names well but I can visualize their faces and piece together an estimated range when they raise from UTG or think of all the significant hands we've played together. I can actually remember most of the details of every big hand I've played online as well. Not the players in the hand necessarily, but the betting sequence and all. Sometimes I post hands in the HH section from years ago and I can recall the details all very vividly.
4. I don't play online now at all except for the occasional play money game on Stars out of boredom.
Live is so much softer than online it's really hard to describe if you haven't done it. I mean, I do not think I am great at reading people but sometimes they just give off so much information it's ridiculous. Some people I cannot read through tells at all though. I think physical tells are incredibly overrated.
But their ranges will be so narrow you can exploit them. I feel pretty confident in saying that most $1-$2 live games are equivalent to like 10 NL or 25 NL at best. There is the caveat that there will be the occasional very good player who's looking to grind out a few quick buyins. At some $2-$5 games I've played, you run the gamut from incredibly weak players to real professionals, but it's so easy to figure out how good someone is you can just avoid the good ones. You will also very occasionally run into the perceptive live player who actually does garner information off tells.
The interesting thing, I think, about me is that I've become a vastly superior player since Black Friday, i.e. not playing that much.
Just before Black Friday, I sort of started having some poker epiphanies. There had been times where I had been discouraged and sort of stopped playing. Poker can be a real grind and it isn't always fun. But I felt I was on track to getting really better in a lot of different ways. I made a semi-decent score in an MTT 2 days before Black Friday. I had found a bunch of poker buddies in New York and talking to them really opened my eyes to a lot of things I was missing.
After Black Friday, I started reading and studying a lot more and I began understanding a lot of different concepts I had never heard of before. I wish I had had this epiphany years ago, but oh well. If I get to play online again I am pretty confident that I will be able to improve even more, but who knows? In live games it's hard to get enough volume or find enough spots to put concepts into practice.