Making A living at 50NL holdem

[NoahSD]

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

[excession]

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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]

[Arruda]

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.

[jukofyork]

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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:



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):



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

[lefty rosen]

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.......

[Emperor]

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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.

[Dazarath]

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.

[Nsight7]

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.

[cha59]

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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

[ktulu22]

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.