So, just curious, how many of you here play online for a living? Or for a part time / side income?
More specifically and more interesting to myself - how many do this on ACR? Im a VA resident and my online options are limited. I am considering possibly a side hustle online or even perhaps making a leap to full time in the near future. Anyhow, please let me know your stories
Used to play for living for several years. Started with lessons, passed a quiz and earned a free $50
bankroll. Turned it into $800 during my first month. Spent several years playing 6-7 days a week, minimum 5 hours per day. Every month was profitable. PLayed at several sites, 12 tables maximum.
I believe that this playing thousands of hands each day is a single way to have positive saldo. Since we all understand that during some time all of the money deposited today will be
casinos money because of the rake, we have to understand that the driver of this machine is the regular player.
Regular player is like a dealer in a black jack. BJ dealer stops at some point - that's his strategy and it pays well in a long run. Some with poker reg, he has a strategy that pays well in a long run. Mathematically - you'll be hitting set on a flop with any pocket pair once in every 7 deals, you will get AA once in every 300 deals...SO If you're playing just one table you might be bored to wait for the action. If you're playing 10 tables - you see x10 more deals and there will always be a table with action, so you won't get bored. By the end of the year two things are pretty equal. The rake generated for the casino and increase of your bankroll. If you've generated $10K rake and you've got +20K bankroll - you've been lucky and smart, haven't done any stupid moves. If you've generated $10K rake and bankroll increased by just 2K then it means you're tilting.
Being a reg is like signing a unofficial contract with poker room, the more hands you'll play - the better you'll be paid.
If you're increasing your bankroll without withdrawing it then things are going better and better. When you'll decide to cash out big part of your bankroll or all of it and start all over again from micro limits to high stakes then you'll be surprised with a long period of sick bad beats. Thats my observation, ofcouse people say that online poker is not rigged and random number generators are fair, but after withdrawing 90% of bankroll the remaining 10% wont last long, it doesn't matter how tight and smart your game is, 1 out will work way to often for your opponents.
I believe that the time when online poker and poker in general was a great place to make money is over. There is simply too much info around about poker and miracles when casino player wins big money on a
roulette table and suddenly decides to play high stakes Holdem are not happening these days. Poker rooms consume all of the money in a long run, and more and more fish has to deposit money to let the pros and regs win it, but since the fish is able to study and read the articles then it's hard to say who is the fish at any moment of time at the table.
Online poker can change and become profitable for players only in one case. Since there is no difference for PC server when its hosting a freeroll or $109 buy-in tournament. BUT there is a huge difference for casino owners when their servers exchange several kilowatts of electricity together with traffic for $9 rake paid by each one of the 1000 players who registered... the PC server has generated $9k profit during 7 hours of tournament, and consumed 9kW of energy and 2Gb of traffic... at the same time a $10 freeroll consumed same traffic and energy and generated no profit. One single $109 tourney generates enough profit to provide thousand of
freerolls for the next month. Who has a financial loss in this case? Players do.
The best thing online poker rooms can do about it is to switch from rake to subscription plans. Like pay $30 per month and play all tournaments with no rake, or pay $5 per month and play only micro limits with no rake. Current system is rigged, poker rooms are swallowing all money, and all they need is new deposits, that's why we see so much advertising around.
What is the conclusion?
Number of players increases while number of fish is getting lower each year. Can you make constant profit in such coditions? Rakeback options are not as good as they used to be in the past... 100 year life is 876.000 hours including 30% sleep time. Do you think that it's a good option to spend some % of your life for browsing pixels at your screen and believeing that you see poker cards? Do you think that it's a good option to make money by creating no product and no service, by sitting at a chair several hours a day and clicking those 3 buttons? I used to think that it's good, and it was running good when i did that, but at some point I've realised that i'm not doing anything useful for the society, not doing anything useful for myself, it's all about the money, but I have many other much more interesting and exsciting options to generate money by doing useful things for the society. The best thing each poker player can do is to set some goals for online poker and poker in general, and when you reach your goals try to calculate everything. Time spent, per hour rate, compare it with the other options in your life... If you have nothing better to do, then go on. If poker is filling your world then go on... Poker was filling my world until I felt that in reality it's quite empty. One of my friends says that professional poker player is someone between scavenger crow and pickpocket thief, and I had arguments in past against it, but currently I have none, except for the argument that it's a army of thieves in a poker room country with its laws, where the leader gets it the major profit, while soldiers have to share the rest.
