NL 1/2 Making a living?

[otter]

Over time, $50/hour is unrealistic hourly rate for $1-2nl. You may have a day, or perhaps a week where you make that much, but unless you're playing with blind people you can't make that consistently long term.

[jeffnc]

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to break even you Must play very good [everyone thinks they do]you cant ever tilt,you must play in good games,you must have a big enough bankroll to carry you thru losing streaks which you will have.To be a winning player you must do the above and be a great player[everyone thinks they are]..

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Come on. I understand that an average player will lose money, but that can also be misleading depending on the game. And you have to be "great" to win? Hardly. Not at $1/2 NL in Las Vegas live games, no way.

OK, a little math. Average might be "mean", "median", or "mode". Typically people mean "mean". But it doesn't have to be. A player who "breaks even" to the other players will lose a little to rake and tips. But breaking even against the competition doesn't necessarily mean "average".

Consider being at a 10 player table. In one extreme case, there could be an absolutely horrible player, call him number 10 out of 10. You could be the next worse player, at 9 out of 10. But you could be way better than #10, and almost as good as #1 through #8. #10 could lose $900, and that could be split up among the other 9, with you winning $90 and the #1 player winning $120. You are worse than the average player, but higher than the median player (the median EV in this game is -$500).

So there are many variables, and you don't necessarily have to be very good to win. You do need to be better than at least some players at your table, but not necessarily better than the majority.

[nldurham13]

The last post reminded me of a nother important part of being a live pro, TIPPING. Another great part of internet poker is that you don't tip which is a major expense as a live pro. Playing 10 handed,the odds say you should win 1 out of every 10 hands or 2 hands an hour(approx.) If you tip 1 dollar per winning hand and play 50 hrs a week thats 100 dollars, 400 dollars a month, 4800 a year. This expense, for most people, is probably only second to rent. This is if you only tip a buck. What I am trying to say is over tipping is a huge leak. I also was a dealer for a time so I am not trying to piss off any dealers here. Good Luck

[barryc83]

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For the year I made 50-60k, I had a roomate who also played and he made over 100k. He did play a bit more 2-5 though.(he also has a 20k month) I never had a losing month becaue I was playing a low variance style.(NIT) I know its not alot of money but it was fun, no resposibilities, low stress. I was fortunate to run good early which obv. helped.

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To make 50-60k/yr playing 1/2 live were you playing more than 40 hrs/week?

[xxrod17xx]

Yea I think you can play 1/2 NL for a living under nldurham13's circumstances only: rent was paid, so it was just food gas utilities and a few other things. So basically he was just building a bankroll. I also thing his style of play is the way to beat a high varience game like 1/2 NL. People in that game will literally give you their money as a gift if you just hang out and wait for it.

[nldurham13]

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[ QUOTE ]
For the year I made 50-60k, I had a roomate who also played and he made over 100k. He did play a bit more 2-5 though.(he also has a 20k month) I never had a losing month becaue I was playing a low variance style.(NIT) I know its not alot of money but it was fun, no resposibilities, low stress. I was fortunate to run good early which obv. helped.

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To make 50-60k/yr playing 1/2 live were you playing more than 40 hrs/week?

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Yes, atleast most of the time. On the weekends I would play 15 hours a day or more. Usually the later it gets the deeper the stacks get and you can make some pretty decent cash. If there was a monkey in the game with 300bb or more I wouldn't leave until he did. Of course this can bite you in the ass, but for the most part it is very profitable. Also at places like Ceasers with the 1-2 500max game, when peolpe start getting deep the blinds mean nothing. The game effectively becomes 2-5 or so. Most people play scared deep(and rightfully so). Every mistake is magnified, and bluffing is more effective if used correctly. I would say I probably played 60 hrs a week on average.

[xxrod17xx]

I think both of these posts are pretty unthoughtful. I think the problem with maturity is that "kids" are expected to grow up a lot less slowly and much later than our parents were and the same with their parents before them. For my generation (I am 22) going off to college and getting your degree is the norm. While most of us are living on our own and required to have much more responsibility than we ever had before we are still not forced to grow up like our parents for example. Most of our parents were married for the first time by my age now. They may have had us around this age (like my parents for example).

Responsibility was forced much earlier on people in their early twenties years ago. That is not the case today. After we get out of college a lot of us are still going to go home and live with our parents until we get our feet planted on the ground. I see a lot wrong with that in todays society. We are expected to grow up slowly and the mistakes that our parents might have made are really tried to be avoided, but when we are not forced to grow up and take some responsibility I think a lot of people fail to ever grow up.

Mucked your comments make sense, but in a really overgeneralized and no offense but a stupid way. To say that we have no structure is completely wrong. I think that we have a much slower structure than the one that you may have had when you were growing up. And the Keys, at the same time to just blame the fact on our lack of responsibility on being young is just not thinking really at all. The early 20's for Mucked was when he probably became an adult and started to have responsibility so that age is no really considered young in his generation. For us, were still kids because we have not been forced into a situation where we do not need to act as adults just yet.

I also want to say that I am sure there are a million other factors as to why these kids just thought it would be cool to act like ballers and just completely blow their rolls, but I think you can really attribute it to the stucture of some of our social institutions today and how we are eased into responsibility and adulthood. Not because we are not raised without any structure at all or the fact that we are just young and stupid.

[Cactus Jack]

nh

[xxrod17xx]

thanks man, I have will have a sociology degree in May so those comments just made 0 sense to me

[Cactus Jack]

No problem. Given that I have children 29 and 25, it's interesting to hear some intelligent comment on your generation. Most times it's white noise and excuses. Yours I can understand. We Baby Boomers did the best we could, but I think we didn't do as good a job as we wanted to do. We thought we were going to do it differently from our parents--The Greatest Generation?--but we screwed it up. We've taken responsibility off the table and consequences are no longer clear. We didn't do you any favors. Sorry about that.

Again, nh.