Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Hi all i have recently been doing well at 50nl making around $80 to $100 per day with rakeback. I am from the UK and have accsess to all poker sites.

I have no interest in giving up my real job however for a decent player like me is this sustainable long term ie I assume online poker will always exist in some form or will it not?

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

ummm not sure exactly what your question is exactly.

First part, online poker will always exist in most countries, but some countries are getting seriously looked over in an online ban. The UK appears to be safe for quite a while.

To answer the thread topic, it depends how you define "a living". I remember when i was playing NL50, i made a little over 100 a day. Thats certainly enough to pay rent, and pay the bills.... but i don't know if thats considered a living. To be able to pay a mortgage and bills and feed a family WHILE saving for investments would probably be considered a living in my opinion.

I think that anybody who relies heavily on poker for their income should be playing at LEAST NL100. If someone said they were a pro NL100 player, i'd roll my eyes. NL 200 i'd start to respect, and NL 400 is where the you start to see a genuine amount of pros. NL 600 is where you'll start to see guys that make more in a month than you will in a year, NL 1000 is where the bubble high rollers play, and anything higher is gravy.

If however, you define a living as just paying rent and bills, hell you can make a living at NL 10. The games are so terrible at that level that a friend i was coaching consistently makes around 4-5 buyins a day, and he's not very good. Multitabling a few hours a day, its pretty easy to pay rent/bills at any limit except super micro.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

5bb/100 *.75 hands/hr *8 tables =$30 + ~$10 rakeback/per hr.

I think there are a lot of people out there who would be happy to make $40/hr.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

yes

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

yes, but you will (and should) move up sooner or later.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Hi sig are you making a living from poker?

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Making a living from multitabling 50NL will probably drive you to suicide within 6 months tops.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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Making a living from multitabling 50NL will probably drive you to suicide within 6 months tops.

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No Doubt. Of course if you are still multitabling 50 NL after 6 months it's prolly about time to reevaluate your career choice and go back to a 9-5 job. Hell I think Aba went from 50 NL to 50,000 NL in about 6 months.
[img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Find a live game and play 1/2 NL live you'll make a bunch more.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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Find a live game and play 1/2 NL live you'll make a bunch more.

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um no

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

I'll be 20 tabling 10NL before I go back to a normal job.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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I'll be 20 tabling 10NL before I go back to a normal job.

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hmm... i won't

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Well, right now I multi-table $25 and $50 NL and I tend to get right around $20/hr. I think, like the first reply said, that NL 100 is right about where one can really start to make a decent wage though, like in the $30 to $40 per hour range.

My goal is the NL 200 games simply because I think that is the point after which the games have too many pros.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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Find a live game and play 1/2 NL live you'll kill yourself quicker.

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Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

If you're young and still in college I think its fine but as for a real job playing $50nl thats a joke in my opinion. You'll barely make ends meet and it will get old quick.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

I started playing full time at $50NL

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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If you're young and still in college I think its fine but as for a real job playing $50nl thats a joke in my opinion. You'll barely make ends meet and it will get old quick.

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if you think about it. a winning player could do fairly well multitabling. you can certainly be making more than 10 dollars an hour...more like 25-30 if you were just 6tabling.

if you dont have a family and put in 30 hours a week, youd be doing pretty alright.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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To be able to pay a mortgage and bills and feed a family WHILE saving for investments would probably be considered a living in my opinion.

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Yup, and it's important to note that although poker will always be about in some form, the game focus and texture will change, if you can't adapt you'll be made redundant.

I've seen the squeeze placed on low fixed limit players.
Many who were happy with 2k a month and didn't move on are now finding themselves in trouble.

NP making good money from limit providing you adapted.

NL will face different changes. When the TV boom subsides the constant influx of new plankton will dry up. Also weak players will ultimately tend to drift into other games. There has always been an underlying trend from NL to FL. Perhaps a new game will crop up for those who go broke too quick in NL, but the pressure to move is always there.

The games will not remain as soft as they are, so make sure you understand the underlying concepts well. When you do I don't think you'll be playing NL50

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

It depends on how many tables you play on. If only 1 then I wouldn't think it would be sustainable. Post stats.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

I agree with you. I think the live game by me is exactly like NL 10 in terms of player quality but the time charge is lethal.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

I think a lot of us have to realize that it's different for non-Americans as our table quality has drastically gone down post neteller-disaster.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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If you're young and still in college I think its fine but as for a real job playing $50nl thats a joke in my opinion. You'll barely make ends meet and it will get old quick.

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if you think about it. a winning player could do fairly well multitabling. you can certainly be making more than 10 dollars an hour...more like 25-30 if you were just 6tabling.

if you dont have a family and put in 30 hours a week, youd be doing pretty alright.

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I agree with this. I think most people here forget what the average person actually makes at an average job. It is something like $12-$14/hr on average. That in mind, multi-tabling NL $50 doesn't seem so bad for ~$25/hr.

Not advocating doing so of course. If you are going to just be an NL 50 pro, it ought to be part-time.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Well you start with a huge advantage as a UK player as you have access to all sites and don't pay tax on winnings.

If you really just need pocket money (ie you live at home with parents) then you can go 'pro' at any stakes you wish I guess. Pro at $50 sounds like a hard grind, but I guess you will move up in due course right?

There is only one stat that really matters here and that's $/hr. If you are making a sum you are happy with and enjoying the game, then I guess it's fine.

I don't see online poker going anywhere soon (outside US it's still growing strong)and as a non-american you can just stay with the fish and avoid the US sites.

I would investigate playing at Codepoker (Prima site) if I were you as they pay you 50% of your monthly winnings as bonus (to a max of $3000). If you are making $70/day at the $50 tables by way of winnings for 25 days of the month, that would make your monthly winnings $1750 and they would give you another 875 - bringing you up to about $2600/£1350 tax free per month, more than say a trainee lawyer gets paid, nevermind something socially useful like a junior nurse.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

If WICKSS in the STT forum can make a living grinding the $3.40 SnG's I'm sure the 50NL tables can accomidate that as well.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

I'd feel pretty depressed if I was 40 making a living playing 50NL

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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5bb/100 *.75 hands/hr *8 tables =$30 + ~$10 rakeback/per hr.

I think there are a lot of people out there who would be happy to make $40/hr.

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5bb/100 hmmm someone still plays at party poker!

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

You need to make 3x as much money as you need to live if you are playing for a living IMO.

This is based on the assumption that you want to move up, you want to pad your bankroll and you want to minimize your ROR.

Let's say you net $2k at a current job/month.

If you are making $3k/month at poker, you need to cash out $2k every month, making bankroll building extremely tedious.

I'd say the minimum stake to make a living at poker is $100 NL, and that's pushing it.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

You can make 60k a year at 10c/25c.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

My mom and dad take turns playing 50NL and doing the laundry.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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I'd feel pretty depressed if I was 40 making a living playing 50NL

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I'd feel pretty depressed if I was 40 making a living pointlessly pushing bits of paper around a desk in a sterile office, composing tedious emails about widgets, making small talk with boring colleagues around the water-cooler and sitting in traffic for endless hours for the 10,000th day in a row.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Really good players can easily turn out 100-150/hour at NL50 12-tabling with rakeback.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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I'd feel pretty depressed if I was 40 making a living playing 50NL

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I'd feel pretty depressed if I was 40 making a living pointlessly pushing bits of paper around a desk in a sterile office, composing tedious emails about widgets, making small talk with boring colleagues around the water-cooler and sitting in traffic for endless hours for the 10,000th day in a row.

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As someone who is 40, I'll just say you'll feel pretty depressed and leave it at that.. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Since he makes no reference to stats such as BB/100, I believe his question is more of the type "do you guys think online 50NL will remain easy as it is or you think it's just a Gold Rush doomed to end?"

I've been asking myself sometimes the same questions and would like some opinion on this as well.

But I feel one should not count on it in terms of long term. You either should plan to improve your game and make a lot more money than that or you shouldn't be surprised if one day things start to look worse. I currently grind ultra-easy 25NL games at European sites but I don't feel this will be like this forever. We have new players every month. Some will learn to play, some won't. The ones that learn will probably remain playing, the ones that don't will eventually give up in time. This will eventualy decrease the ratio bad player / average player. Good players will be able to improve their game faster than that and eventually will make a good living. But if you pretend to stay at 50NL without improving your game, you shouldn't be surprised if two years from now you're making much less at 50NL than now. Your opponents won't necessary be better players but probably won't be the maniacs we have the pleasure to play against right now. They will likely turn to weak-tight style, and loose money more slowly.

I'm tired and have no idea if this makes any sense, it's just what I envision ahead. I can't imagine thousands of fish coming to try the game every month and blast away one buy in going all-in pre-flop with AJo-type hands every two-minute. Some day this will stop.

I'd appreciate any criticism on my line of tought, for I'm obviously a new poster, but sharing the same fear that grinding 25NL or 50NL won't be so easily profitable forever [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Excuse any grammar flaws, English not my native language.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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Since he makes no reference to stats such as BB/100, I believe his question is more of the type "do you guys think online 50NL will remain easy as it is or you think it's just a Gold Rush doomed to end?"

I've been asking myself sometimes the same questions and would like some opinion on this as well.

But I feel one should not count on it in terms of long term. You either should plan to improve your game and make a lot more money than that or you shouldn't be surprised if one day things start to look worse. I currently grind ultra-easy 25NL games at European sites but I don't feel this will be like this forever. We have new players every month. Some will learn to play, some won't. The ones that learn will probably remain playing, the ones that don't will eventually give up in time. This will eventualy decrease the ratio bad player / average player. Good players will be able to improve their game faster than that and eventually will make a good living. But if you pretend to stay at 50NL without improving your game, you shouldn't be surprised if two years from now you're making much less at 50NL than now. Your opponents won't necessary be better players but probably won't be the maniacs we have the pleasure to play against right now. They will likely turn to weak-tight style, and loose money more slowly.

I'm tired and have no idea if this makes any sense, it's just what I envision ahead. I can't imagine thousands of fish coming to try the game every month and blast away one buy in going all-in pre-flop with AJo-type hands every two-minute. Some day this will stop.

I'd appreciate any criticism on my line of tought, for I'm obviously a new poster, but sharing the same fear that grinding 25NL or 50NL won't be so easily profitable forever [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Excuse any grammar flaws, English not my native language.

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Yep, I've been wondering this for a while too. I can only really see two possible outcomes:

A) Online poker profitability will be cyclic and when there gets to be too many sharks and not enough fish, then some of the sharks will leave and the shark:fish ratio will improve again. This would be similar to what is seen in predator-prey models such as the classic "foxes and rabbits" model:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/gzg113/lv001.jpg

B) Online poker stabilizes to an unprofitable equilibrium and nobody can really make any money other than the sites themselves. This would be similar to what happened in the American gold rush and would be better modeled by the "rabbits and sheep" population model where both agents compete for the same foodstuff (grass):

http://www.personal.psu.edu/gzg113/lv003.jpg

Juk [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

I recall Absolute games getting like this. Nearly unbeatable without the bonus and rakeback, then when a bunch of weakie tighty grinders quit, the games would get fishy for a few weeks then would get the same as before.......

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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I recall Absolute games getting like this. Nearly unbeatable without the bonus and rakeback, then when a bunch of weakie tighty grinders quit, the games would get fishy for a few weeks then would get the same as before.......

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These cycles are EXTREMELY noticable at limit poker. I used to track cycles between 3/6 and 10/20. 1 month one of those limits would be a rock garden, and a different limit would be a fish pond. Next month it would be completely the opposite.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Juk, that's a very interesting point you make. Personally, I believe the second model would be more fitting, because unlike foxes/rabbits, it's not true to say "once a fish, always a fish". In general, people tend to get better, not worse, so it would require large, periodic influxes of new fish to form a situation like that first graph.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

Indeed, but one thing to consider in addition that Daz is that this applies primarily to fish that continue to play very regularly. Many recreational online players only play periodically and thus don't improve much either. Usually, I would suppose, they make a little bit of improvement and then don't play for two or three weeks, play for two or three hours on some Saturday, and then repeat said cycle.

I think the true answer is somewhere in between the two models.

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

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If WICKSS in the STT forum can make a living grinding the $3.40 SnG's I'm sure the 50NL tables can accomidate that as well.

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The wickss thread has turn into an all time great for those who haven't seen it:

link

Re: Making A living at 50NL holdem
 

People can ;earn to play the game all they want - it is much harder to change your persona. The winning players are the ones that can keep a level head and play their A game for long periods of time. The losing players are the ones that lose focus after playing for 3 hours without winning or taking a few rough beats or their wife cheats on them or whatever. Your average fish (not all) knows the game better than you think - total focus and concentration and discipline is what seperates the haves from the have nots.